rotecting   the 
Nation's  Money 


GIFT   OF 


Protecting  the 
Nation's  Money 


A  Brief  Sketch  Recounting  how 
Bank-Exchange  Has  but  Re- 
cently Come  to  Take  the  Place 
of  Currency — and  how  the  Mod- 
ern Forger  Has  Improved  His 
Opportunity — Together  with 
an  Account  of  the  Labors  of 
American  Inventors  During  the 
Past  Seventy -five  Years  to  De- 
velop the  Present  Art  of  Protect- 
ing Negotiable  Instruments. 

By  Jack  W.  Speare 


Todd  Protectograph  Co. 

(ESTABLISHED  1899) 

World's  Largest  Makers  of  Check-Protecting 
Devices 

Rochester,  New  York 


tdfy  Accounts' 


In  Grandfather's  day  they  paid  their  bills  in 
clinking  coin  of  the  realm;  Checks  were  not  in 
circulation,  so  there  were  no  "check  raisers"  and 
no  check-protecting  devices. 


.  c. 


The  Business  Man  of  Today- 
All  Done  with  a  Stroke  of  the  Pen 

Checks  have  taken  the  place  of  currency;  the 
crook  who  used  to  filch  a  bag  of  gold  now  "raises" 
or  forges  a  check.  No  modern  concern  can  well 
do  business  safely  without  the  Todd  system. 


372861 


Copyright  1918 
TODD  PROTECTOGRAPH  CO. 

(Established  1899) 
World's  Largest  Makers  of  Check-Protecting  Devices 

Rochester,  New  York 
AH  U.  S.  and  Foreign  Rights  Reserved 


Protecting  the  Nation's  Money 

(Explaining  why  there  was  no  "Check- 
Raising"  in  Father's  and  Grand- 
father's Day) 

11  'Enclosed  find  check.'  " 

The  above,  according  to  the  immortal  Walt  Mason,  are — 

"The  sweetest  words 

"That  e'er  outclassed  the  song  of  birds." 


ODERN  "Business  English"  knows  no  phrase  of 
deeper,  more  vital  import  than  that — "Enclosed 
find  check." 

But  fifty,  or  even  forty  years  ago,  the  word 
"check"  meant  little  or  nothing  in  the  daily  life  of  the 
average  American  business  man.  The  idea  of  the  bank 
check  is  as  old  as  Egypt;  but  it  is  only  within  the  memory 
of  you  and  me  that  individual  checks  became  common  instru- 
ments of  exchange  and  began  to  circulate  freely  from  hand 
to  hand  and  from  one  city  to  another. 

The  average  man  in   the  generation   that  fought  our 
Civil  War  had  scarcely  heard  of  a  bank  check  as  a  credit 
instrument.      There  was  nothing  re- 
sembling   a    clearing    house    in    this      92  per  cent,  of  Our 
country  until  1853.     Such  a  thing  as     Business  Is  Now 
tl     .     j , ,  r          111  •*  ransacted  with 

a      raised       or     forged     check    was      Checks 

almost  unthought-of.      The  need  for 
check-protection  had  not  suggested  itself. 

And  now  consider  how  our  entire  business  system  has 
been  revolutionized  within  the  span  of  an  ordinary  lifetime. 

For  the  check  today  is  entered  on  the  world's  ledgers 
as  "Cash";  and  "money,"  except  for  small  change,  has 
become  almost  as  scarce  in  the  realms  of  business  as  the 


6  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

"wampum"  of  the  Indians  or  the  beads  and  tokens  used 
in  barter  by  savage  tribes. 

In  transacting  the  business  of  the  United  States  today, 
we  use  yearly  over  six  billion  individual  checks  and  drafts.* 

One  authority  stated  recently  that  "Fully  95  per  cent. 

of  bank  transactions  in  this  country  are  now  carried  on 

by  the  use  of  checks ;  and  in  the  whole- 

Six  Billion  Checks       saie  trade  in  some  sections  at   least 
Change  Hands  in         r»o  r     n  i       i     i 

TT  «    A          77  9%  Per  cent,  of  all  bank  deposits  are 

LJ.  o.  Annually 

in  the  form  of  checks,  f 

It  is  commonly  estimated  by  financial  experts  that,  of 
all  our  buying  and  selling  in  this  country  today,  we  make 
final  settlement  as  follows: 

90  to  95  per  cent,  by  bank  check,  draft,  etc. 

5  to  10  per  cent,  only  in  money. 

By  the  word  "money"  as  used  here  is  meant  only  our 
actual  currency — a  total  circulation  according  to  the  U.  S. 
Treasury  Reports,  of  barely  four  billion  dollars — ($4,018,- 
043,555  in  1916,  to  be  exact) — -with  which  to  carry  on 
a  volume  of  business  estimated  at  542  billion  dollars  ($542,- 
000,000,000)  in  this  country  annually.  % 

Stated  in  another  way,  this  means  that  the  United 
States  is  doing  business  at  the  rate  of  about  $5,420  yearly 


*  The  estimate  of  the  number  of  individual  checks  and  drafts 
circulated  annually  is  based  on  the  statement  by  Mr.  Jerome  Thralls 
that  "The  amount  of  the  average  check  handled  in  the  United  States  is 
$41.25."  The  volume  of  clearings  reported  by  113  leading  cities  in 
the  "Financial  and  Commercial  Chronicle,"  N.  Y.,  for  the  year  1916 
was  $260,953,235,012.  Dividing  this  by  $41.25  gives  the  number  of 
individual  items  that  constituted  the  year's  "clearings."  Mr.  Thrall's 
position  as  one  of  the  chairmen  of  the  Federal  Reserve  System,  as  well 
as  secretary  of  the  American  Bankers  Association  Clearing  House 
Section  entitles  this  estimate  to  consideration. 

t  "The  Practical  Work  of  a  Bank,"  an  excellent  text  book  on 
modern  bank  practice;  W.  H.  Kniffin,  Bankers  Pub.  Co.,  N.  Y.,  1915. 

I  Prof.  Irving  Fisher,  the  eminent  economist,  of  Yale  University, 
in  his  graphic  diagram  of  "The  Equation  of  Exchange,"  which  is  pub- 
lished annually  in  the  American  Economic  Review.  In  the  diagram 
for  1915  (Vol.  VI.,  No.  2)  Dr.  Fisher  estimates  the  volume  of  business 


PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY  7 

for  each  man,  woman  and  child  in  the  country,  on  a  per- 
capita  circulation  of  only  $39.23  in  money. 

The  secret  of  doing  $138  worth  of  business  with  each 
dollar  of  actual  currency  is  to  be  found,  of  course,  in  our 
wonderfully  flexible  system  of  bank 

exchange,  which  has  been    strength-     *5***"S  E"c% 

,     7 .  .     ,,  ,  t  ,      ,,  Nimble  Dollar 

ened  within  the  past  few  years  by  the     p      -    $138 

organization  of  the  present  Federal  Of  Goods  Yearly 
Reserve  System.  At  the  same  time 
it  is  obvious  that  the  proverbial  "nimble  dollar"  must 
needs  be  extremely  nimble  indeed,  when  we  ask  each  and 
every  poor,  overworked  little  dollar  to  do  the  work  of  $138 
each  year! 

This  apparent  trick  of  financial  magic  is  really  a  part 
of  a  legitimate  and  highly  scientific  system,  as  may  readily 
be  understood  by  examining  the  records  of  the  principal 
clearing  houses,  and  comparing  the  volume  of  transactions 
"cleared"  through  the  banks  with  the  comparatively 
trivial  amount  of  currency  required  to  meet  the  actual 
balances. 

The  New  York  Clearing  House,  during  all  the  years  of 
its  existence  since  1853,  shows  an  average  percentage  of 
balances  to  clearings  of  only  4.64  per  cent.*  Knifftn,  in 
his  "Practical  Work  of  a  Bank,"  already  referred  to, 
mentions  an  instance  where  a  certain  Boston  bank  sent  to 
its  local  clearing  house  items  totalling  $11,000,000  and  had 
a  debit  balance  of  only  about  $2,800  to  pay.  "At  another 


transacted  in  the  U.  S.  for  the  year  mentioned,  as  follows:  "Circu- 
lation of  money  (outside  of  banks  and  U.  S.  Treasury),  1.79  billion 
dollars,  which  changed  hands  about  22  times  in  the  year,  effecting  39 
billion  dollars  of  exchanges.  Volume  of  bank  deposits  subject  to  checks 
9.39  billion  dollars,  which  changed  hands  about  53.6  times  during  the 
year,  effecting  503  billion  dollars  of  exchanges.  A  total  of  $542,000,- 
000,000,  representing  the  total  amount  of  goods  bought  and  sold.'' 

*  Cannon,   "Clearing  Houses,"   National    Monetary    Commission 
Reports,  1910. 


8  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

time,  this  bank  settled  a  debit  against  it  of  $6,180,000  with 
only  $167.31." 

So  now  we  begin  to  see  where  the  importance  of  the 
check  and  our  modern  system  of  clearings  comes  in  as  a 
vital  factor  in  handling  the  swiftly-increasing  business  of 
this  Twentieth  Century. 

America    has,    in    fact,    become    within    the    last    two 


lSJ     <•/    fatff'it  ('ft   /JftMtlM       1  JLN    J 


One  of  the  earliest  American  bank  notes,  issued  by  the  First  Bank 
of  the  United  States,  in  1796.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  it  is  made 
payable  to  a  particular  person  whose  name  is  filled  in,  instead  of  to 
"Bearer  on  Demand"  and  intended  for  general  circulation  like  our 
paper  currency  of  today.  Another  noteworthy  feature  is  the  "inden- 
ture" on  the  left  end — a  survival  of  an  ancient  English  device  intended 
to  prevent  counterfeiting. 

[Illustration  from  "Funds  and  Their  Uses,"  Frederick  A.  Cleveland ; 
by  permission  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  pubs.,  N.  Y.] 


generations  a  land  where  nearly  every  man  who  is  engaged 
in   trade    literally    "makes     his  own 

Nearly  Every  Mer-      money»__or  at  jeast  turns  his  credit 
chant  Now    Makes     .  „.      .  f 

His  Own  Money"       /nto  money-    The  business  or  profes- 
vsional  man  who  has  no  checking  ac- 
count at  his  bank  is  the  rare  exception.      Even   factory 
payrolls,  railroad  fares  and  hotel  bills  are  paid  by  check. 

What  is  true  of  the  United  States  and  Canada  applies 
almost  equally  to  other  English-speaking  countries. 

Perhaps  few  of  us  realize  how  recent  is  the  general  use 


PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

of  "bank  exchange"  in  our  country.  Those  who  remember 
the  period  following  the  Civil  War  will  recall  that  it  was 
by  no  means  unusual  for  the  business  man  of  that  day,  in 
settling  his  accounts,  to  go  from  one  creditor  to  another 
with  sacks  of  coin,  counting  out  the  amount  of  his  indebt- 
edness to  each  in  clinking  gold  and  silver.  It  is  no  longer 
ago  than  the  days  of  '49  that  the  gold  scales  were  a  fixture 
of  the  equipment  in  Western  business  establishments,  and 
the  precious  "dust"  was  weighed  out  painstakingly  each 
time  settlements  were  made. 

Even  in  England,  where  our  system  of  bank  exchange 
was  developed,  the  use  of  bank  checks  and  drafts  was  not 

common  until  about  1850,  at  which 

-          1-1  f      ^        A  Man  s  signature 

time  the  first  clearing  house  for  the  Stands  for  What- 
exchange  of  "country"  checks  was  ever  He  is  Worth 
organized  in  London.  Moreover,  our 

familiar  bank  note  is  barely  two  centuries  old,  having 
been  introduced  in  its  present  form  about  1694,  when  the 
Bank  of  England  was  founded.  In  Continental  Europe, 
it  is  only  since  the  outbreak  of  the  Great  War  that  the 
individual  check  has  made  any  considerable  headway;  and 
it  is  still  the  custom  of  many  commercial  houses  in  France, 
Germany  and  neighboring  countries  to  keep  on  hand 
bulky  supplies  of  gold  coin  against  the  monthly  "settle- 
ment day." 

What  is  it  that  transforms  a  blank  slip  of  paper  into  a 
"check"  for  $5  or  $50,000?  It  is  merely  the  signature  of 
a  man  or  woman  whose  credit  is  known  to  be  good  at  the 
bank  for  that  amount. 

The  modern  bank  has  a  card-index  file  bearing  a  "rec- 
ord" signature  of  each  individual  depositor.  Checks 
presented  for  immediate  payment  are  compared  with  the 
card  record  of  the  depositor  whose  name  appears  in  the 
conventional  space  in  the  lower  right-hand  corner. 

If    the    signatures    agree,   the    check  is    "as   good  as 


PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY  11 

gold."      If    they    do    not    agree,  it   is   worthless — just    a 
scrap  of  spoiled  paper. 

Now,  in  the  days  when  commercial  banks  were  first 
established  in  this  country,  about  1782,*  the  present 
universal  circulation  of  bank  checks  as  substitutes  for 
money,  or  as  evidences  of  credit,  was  hardly  dreamed  of, 
with  all  the  inevitable  "crooked"  work  that  the  use  of  such 
instruments  in  lieu  of  currency  has  brought  in  its  train. 
This  explains  why  our  present  Negotiable  Instruments  acts — 
based  on  the  old  English  laws — are  so  vague  and  conflicting. 

At  the   time   those   ancient  statutes 

r  ,    ,          ,      ,    .     ,,      ~.  ,,  Ihe  Evolution  of 

were  framed,   way  back  in  the  bight-        th    C      k 

eenth  Century,  nobody  dreamed  that 

a  day  would  come  when  the  "raising"  of  negotiable  instru- 
ments would  be  as  easy  and  as  common  as  mere  shop  lifting. 

Even  the  canny  old  Bank  of  England  never  seems  to 
have  considered  when  it  first  began  circulating  bank  notes, 
that  "paper  money"  was  certain  to  offer  a  fertile  field  for 
manipulation  by  dishonest  persons. 

The  Encyclopedia  Britannica  says  that  the  first  bank 
notes  were  simple  printed  forms,  similar  to  our  bank  drafts 
of  today,  on  which  the  amount  was  written  by  hand.  (Imagine 
a  bank  note  for  $10  on  which  you  had  merely  to  erase  the 
figures  $10  and  substitute  $1,000!) 

These  crude  forms,  however,  were  usually  issued  for 
large  amounts  (£40  and  upward),  and  were  promptly 
discontinued  when  bank  notes  began  to  circulate  from  hand 
to  hand. 

Following  the  establishment  of  the  Bank  of  England, 
with  its  charter  to  raise  spending  money  for  the  Crown  by 


*  The  bank  of  North  America  was  organized  in  Philadelphia  under 
charter  granted  by  Congress  to  Robert  Morris  in  1781,  and  began 
business  Jan.  7,  1782.  The  First  Bank  of  the  United  States  was  organ- 
ized by  Alexander  Hamilton  in  1791;  its  charter  expired  in  1811.  The 
Second  Bank  of  the  United  States,  which  survived,  was  organized  in 
1816. 


12  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

giving  notes  to  their  Majesties'  subjects  in  exchange  for 
coin  of  the  realm,  the  first  bank  notes,  as  we  know  them 
today,  were  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  public,  about  1695 
or  1696,  and  at  first  on  a  rather  limited  scale. 

These  pioneer  bank  notes  as  they  first  came  from  the 
press,  were  of  a  very  simple  design,  which  naturally  invited 
forgery.  One  thing  that  tended  to  discourage  the  "penman" 
at  the  start,  though,  was  the  fact  that  there  were  no  de- 
nominations less  than  £5.  This  precaution,  whether 

intentional   or   not,  tended   to   make 
When  Bank  Notes       the  {         f  f        d   notes  difficult 

were    Raised  .         . 

since  it  was  not  always   easy  for   a 

"crook"  in  those  days  of  low  costs  of  living  to  account  for 
the  possession  of  a  sum  equal  to  $25  or  $50  of  our  money. 

Later,  the  bars  were  taken  down  and  notes  for  £1 
and  £2  were  issued.  These  were  the  delight  of  all  amateur 
and  "professional"  penmen,  and  by  1760,  when  these  minor 
bank  notes  had  become  current,  the  crime  of  forgery  was 
rampant  throughout  England. 

Historians  have  recorded  that  by  the  end  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  as  many  as  352  persons  were  convicted 
in  a  single  year  of  "raising"  and  forging  Bank  of  England 
notes,  and  the  prisons  were  literally  filled  to  overflowing 
with  others  awaiting  trial  for  taking  part  in  the  "easy  graft." 

Gradually,  the  temptation  to  forgery  was  lessened  by 
adopting  a  more  intricate  engraved  design,  such  as  we  have 
today;  but  the  sharpers  had  no  trouble  in  taking  a  note  for, 
say,  £1  and  increasing  the  figures  to  £5  or  £25 — a  clear 
profit  of  nearly  $20  to  $100  on  each  note  so  altered.  Thus, 
a  slight  investment,  with  a  little  skill,  paid  large  returns. 

By  1773,  this  matter  had  become  so  serious  that  some 
most  drastic  enactments  were  passed,  making  it  an  offense 
punishable  by  death  "without  benefit  of  clergy,"  to  forge 
bank  notes.  It  was  even  made  illegal  to  write  or  print  a 


PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY  13 

sum  of  money  in  white  letters  on  a  black  ground,  which 
might  suggest  the  style  of  a  bank  note.* 

Great  developments  have  been  made  in  the  art  of  bank- 
note designing  since  the  days  when  English  prisons  were 
filled  with  note  tamperers.  The  notes  below  £5  were 
prohibited  by  enactments  of  1819,  and  there  are  none  in 
circulation  in  the  British  Isles  today,  except  to  a  limited 
extent  in  Scotland;  and  intricate  curly-cues  and  vignettes, 
silk-thread  paper  and  other  safeguards  have  been  intro- 
duced. Still,  as  showing  that  nothing  is  impossible,  there 
occasionally  arises  some  ambitious  criminal  who  peels  a 
figure  "5"  from  a  genuine  bill  and  places  it  over  the  "1" 
on  a  dollar  certificate  to  make  it  look  like  a  "V-spot." 

An  early  history  of  Connecticut  indicates  that  the 
"Nutmeg  State"  had  the  distinction  of  producing  the 
first  "raiser"  in  the  American  Colonies.  Abel  Buell,  a 
native  of  Killingworth,  Conn.,  "Was  apprenticed  to  a  gold 
and  silver  smith  and  before  he  was  twenty  years  of  age  was 
detected  in  'raising'  a  five-shilling  Colonial  note  to  five 
pounds.  He  was  imprisoned  in  Norwich  and  his  forehead 
branded  with  a  letter  C."  f 

Only  recently,  the  papers  of  Winnipeg,  Can.,  were  full 
of  the  doings  of  a  gang  who  succeeded  in  "raising"  the  $10 
bills  of  the  well-known  Molson's  Bank.  These  crooks  had 
discovered  a  way  of  adding  a  second  cipher  after  the  "10" 
on  Molson's  notes,  and  large  numbers  of  these  were  re- 
ported cashed  by  banks  and  merchants  at  their  spurious 
value  of  $100  each. 

Two  things  only  serve  to  prevent  the  "powers  that 
prey"  from  undertaking  wholesale  operations  of  this  kind 
against  Government  bank  notes.  First — there  are  more 
checks  in  circulation  than  bank  notes,  and  it  is  so  ridicu- 


*  "History  of  the  Bank  of  England,"  A.  Andreades;  F.  S.  King  & 
Son.,  Ltd.,  London,  1909. 

t  "Connecticut  as  a  Colony  and  State    or  One  of    the  Original 
Thirteen,"  Forest  Morgan,  editor. 


14  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

lously  easy  to  multiply  the  value  of  the  average  check 
written  with  pen  or  typewriter,  without  leaving  a  trace  of 
the  alteration.  (Of  course,  if  bank  notes  were  still  issued 
in  the  form  of  mere  "blanks,"  with  the  .denomination 
written  by  hand,  the  crooks  would  hardly  bother  them- 
selves with  checks!) 

But  there  is  another  reason,  and  a  very  substantial  one 
from  the  criminal's  point  of  view.  Tampering  with  a  bank 
note  involves  trouble  with  the  Federal  authorities,  who 
know  no  relenting  once  they  take  the  trail  of  an  offender 
against  the  Federal  laws;  whereas  to  "raise"  a  mere  ten- 
dollar  check  to  fifty  or  five  hundred  is  a  minor  offense, 
compared  to  manipulating  Uncle  Sam's  "Promise  to  Pay." 
Moreover,  it  is  rather  difficult  to  establish  proof  against 
a  check  raiser,  especially  if  the  check  passes  through  two 
or  more  hands  before  it  is  presented  to  a  bank  for  payment. 


When  Banks  Trembled  Over  "Raised" 
Drafts 

HE  practice  of  issuing  bank  "drafts,"  postal  money 
orders  and  the  like,  for  remittances  by  post  was  a 
development  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.  Im- 
mediately, as  with  the  first  bank  notes,  the  "under- 
world" sat  up  and  took  notice  of  this  new  opportunity 
for  thievery.  It  was  so  simple  to  step  into  a  bank  and 
purchase  a  draft  on  its  New  York  or  Boston  correspondent 
for  $5,  then  wash  off  the  $5,  put  $5,000  in  its  place,  take 
it  to  the  city  where  it  was  payable,  secure  the  money  and 
make  a  profit  of  several  thousand  per 
cent.,  with  no  "rough  work,"  no  burg-  "Safety"  Paper 

lars'  tools,  no  soiled  hands  or  telltale         FA°:ils  when  Used 

.  .      ,        .  Alone 

blood  stains. 

Naturally,  this  field  immediately  attracted  the  "super- 
ior" type  of  thieves,  those  who  had  a  leaning  toward 
"Raffles"  methods  and  "art  for  art's  sake."  They  de- 
scended upon  the  bank  draft  like  vultures,  and  for  a  score 
of  years  had  the  banking  fraternity  sitting  up  nights 
wondering  where  the  notorious  "draft-raising  gangs  "headed 
by  the  famous  old-timers,  such  as  George  Wilkes,  would 
"break  out"  next. 

To  be  sure,  the  bankers  lost  no  time  in  providing  them- 
selves with  draft  forms  printed  upon  a  special  kind  of 
"safety"  paper,  so  called,  having  a  tinted  surface  coating 
that  was  sensitive  to  moisture  and  acids.  The  crooks  then 
set  themselves  to  prove  that  crime  develops  as  well  as 
science,  and  the  banks  soon  learned  to  their  sorrow  that 


WHEN  THE  BANKS  TREMBLED  17 

"safety"  paper  alone  was  a  rather  incomplete  protection. 
It  is  an  odd  fact  that  sums  written  in  words  and  figures 
with  the  pen  lend  themselves  to  the  most  startling  changes 
without  making  any  erasure — simply  by  adding  certain 
pen  strokes,  a  method  which  crooks  term  "penning."  For 
instance,  there  is  no  special  paper  or  "acid-proof"  writing 
ink  that  can  prevent  the  words  "Eight  Thousand"  written 
in  long  hand  being  changed  to  Eighty  Thousand  by  merely 
adding  a  letter  "y" — and  the  same  is 
true  of  nearly  any  other  amount,  no  Crooks  Proved  to 
matter  how  carefully  written.  Figures  Banks  that  Figures 

4.-ui     ^u  j         Were  Poor  Pro- 

are  even  more  susceptible  than  words.     tection 

Experts  have  always  agreed,  however, 

in  urging  the  use  of  sensitized  papers;  but  only  in  con- 
junction with  adequate  mechanical  protection. 

There  were  regularly  organized  gangs  in  those  early 
days  when  drafts  were  first  coming  into  general  use,  headed 
by  such  pioneer  captains  of  the  pen  as  George  Wilkes, 
Charles  Becker  and  Alonzo  Whiteman,  who  conducted  a 
systematic  business  of  making  big  drafts  out  of  little  ones, 
and  their  operations  covered  this  country  as  well  as  extend- 
ing into  Europe.  They  had  their  "captains"  detailed  to  the 
duty  of  purchasing  little  drafts  for  "raw  material";  their 
"scratchers"  who  multiplied  the  amounts  with  acid  or  by 
adding  a  few  pen  strokes;  their  "middle-men,"  who  acted 
as  go-betweens  and  kept  the  various  members  of  the  gang 
from  becoming  acquainted  with  each  other;  and  their 
"presenters"  who  "laid  down"  the  "raised"  paper  over  the 
bank  counters  and  turned  the  proceeds  over  to  the  middle- 
men for  distribution. 

Then  the  banks  went  a  step  further.  They  adopted 
machines  called  "check  punches"  which  punched  or  per- 
forated the  amount  in  figures  representing  dollars,  in  one 
corner  of  the  draft,  as  for  instance,  like  this: 


18  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

These  punches  were  among  the  earliest  form  of  mechani- 
cal protection,  and  are  first  mentioned  in  the  Patent  Office 
records  about  1870.  They  made  their  appearance  on  the 
market  shortly  afterward.  For  a  time  it  seemed  as  though 
the  rascals  were  check-mated;  but  only  for  a  little  time. 
Soon  the  master  "scratchers"  discovered  that  anything 
which  is  punched  or  cut  out  of  a  piece  of  paper  can  be 
restored  in  some  manner,  so  they  merely  procured  "punches" 
of  their  own,  took  the  little  disks  or  punchings  thrown  out 
of  the  draft  by  the  punch  machine  and 
How  "Draft  put  tiiem  back  in  place  to  fill  up  the 

first  °r  last  Character  in  the  amount- 
They  then  punched  a  few  additional 

figures  or  ciphers,  and  thus  multiplied  the  draft  by  ten 
or  a  thousand  times  its  actual  value. 

Moreover,  the  banks,  feeling  secure  in  their  use  of  these 
prehistoric  "punches,"  allowed  their  guard  to  drop  tem- 
porarily, and  immediately  came  a  flood  of  "raised"  drafts 
that  were  cashed  by  banks  from  one  end  of  the  country 
to  the  other. 

The  first  "raised"  bank  draft  in  this  country  of  which  we 
are  able  to  show  a  legible  reproduction  is  the  $14  instru- 
ment illustrated  on  page  10,  issued  by  the  Merchants 
National  Bank  of  Dunkirk,  N.  Y.,  against  the  Merchants 
National  Exchange  Bank  of  New  York,  in  1885.  This 
draft  dates  back  to  the  days  before  any  sort  of  protection 
was  in  general  use.  The  amount  was  easily  multiplied  100 
times  by  using  acid,  and  it  was  cashed  for  $1,400  in  New 
York. 

It  is  related  of  a  rascally  old-timer  named  Shear  or 
Slifer,  that  one  day  in  1892  he  personally  purchased  drafts 
at  four  different  banks  in  the  town  of  Lansing,  Mich.,  in 
the  sum  of  $18  each,  then  "raised"  each  one  to  $1,800  and 
cashed  them,  one  and  all,  at  banks  in  the  neighboring 
city  of  Detroit — all  within  the  space  of  24  hours.  A  $7,000 


WHEN  THE  BANKS  TREMBLED  19 

day's  work!  (One  of  these  $18  drafts  is  reproduced  on 
page  16.  It  was  "protected"  (?)  with  the  old-style  figure 
punch.) 

The  late  Charles  Becker,  called  in  his  time  the  "prince 
of  forgers,"  is  credited  with  one  of  the  cleverest  games  ever 
worked  with  bank  drafts.  He  was  engaged  at  the  time 
with  a  band  of  able  accomplices  in  swindling  banks  from 
Coast  to  Coast  by  raising  small  drafts.  One  day  in  1895 
he  sent  a  confederate  to  the  Bank  of  Woodland,  Cal.,  to 
buy  a  draft  for  $12.  This  bank  was  using  "safety"  paper 
and  also  the  then-popular  figure  "punch,"  and  still  the 
cashier  took  an  unusual  precaution.  Not  liking  the  looks 
of  the  stranger,  he  "punched"  the  figures  $12$  on  both 
upper  corners  of  the  draft.  (A  photographic  reproduction 
is  shown  on  page  20.)  Thus  doubly  "punched,"  and  written 
on  special  paper,  the  cashier  had  a  right  to  feel  that  he  was 
"playing  safe." 

Becker  took  this  $12  draft,  filled  up  the  perforations 
forming  the  first  two  characters,  repeating  this  on  both 
corners,  then  punched  some  new  ciphers  and  characters 
of  his  own.  He  washed  off  part  of  the  "safety"  tint  of 
the  paper,  erased  the  line  after  the  written  word  "Twelve," 
also  erased  the  figures,  restored  the  "safety"  tint,  and  thus 
made  the  instrument  into  a  very  nice  looking  draft  for 
$22,000,  as  shown  in  the  illustration. 

Neither  the  Nevada  Bank,  which  cashed  this  draft, 
nor  the  Crocker- Wool  worth,  on  which  it  was  drawn,  ever 
noticed  anything  wrong  with  it.  It  was  presented  one 
morning  to  the  Nevada  Bank  in  San  Francisco,  by  a  de- 
positor supposed  to  be  in  the  lumber  business  and  having 
a  very  active  account — afterward  proved  to  be  Becker  him- 
self. It  was  over  twenty  years  before  the  courts  finally 
decided  which  one  of  the  three  banks  involved  in  the 
transaction  should  stand  the  loss. 

The  fraud  was  committed  in  December,  1895.  Becker 
was  finally  caught  and  convicted  in  connection  with  other 


WHEN  THE  BANKS  TREMBLED  21 

"draft-raising"  operations,  but  the  money  had,  of  course, 
been  dissipated  in  the  meantime,  and  other  banks  in  every 
part  of  the  country  had  lost  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
dollars  by  the  work  of  himself  and  his  contemporaries. 
Among  these  were  Alonzo  Whiteman,  George  Wilkes,  Jack 
Brush,  "Doctor"  Doyle,  Robert  Knox,  and  many  other 
"professionals"  of  that  day,  each  at  the  head  of  an  organized 
gang. 

William  A.  Pinkerton,  the  famous  detective,  was  at 
the  height  of  his  fame  in  the  days  when  the  old-timers 
mentioned  were  most  active,  and  he 
had  good  occasion  to  study  their  Pinkerton  s 
methods  very  carefully,  since  he  was 
retained  by  the  American  Bankers 
Association.  In  one  of  his  published  monographs  on  for- 
gery, Pinkerton  speaks  of  Becker  and  his  contemporaries 
as  the  cleverest  "scratchers"  of  all  time.  (William  Boland 
and  the  present  modern  school  were  still  to  be  heard  from 
—but,  of  that,  later.) 

"Finely  engraved  or  lithographed  checks,  chemically 
prepared  or  tinted  paper,  machines  for  cutting  perforations, 
cipher  or  anti-forgery  systems  adopted  by  banks,  do  not 
prevent  these  forgeries,"  said  Pinkerton.*  "Professional 
forgers  are  constantly  studying  to  overcome  these  protec- 
tive devices,  and  when  overcome  the  forger  operates  with 
increased  confidence.  The  professional  forger  usually  has 
considerable  knowledge  of  chemicals,  enabling  him  to  alter 
checks,  drafts,  bills  of  exchange,  letters  of  credit,  or  to 
change  the  names  on  registered  bonds.  He  is  something 
of  an  artist,  too,  for  with  a  fine  camel's-hair  brush  he  can 
restore  the  most  delicate  tints  on  bank-safety  paper,  where 
the  tints  have  been  destroyed  by  the  use  of  chemicals;  in 
fact,  no  bank-safety  paper  is  a  protection  against  him. 

"When  the  amount  of  a  genuine  check  or  draft  is  per- 
forated in  the  paper,"  this  celebrated  old-time  detective 

*  A  pamphlet,  "Forgery,"  by  Wm.  A.  Pinkerton;  pub.  Pinkerton's 
Natl.  Detective  Agency,  N.  Y.,  1905. 


22 


PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 


continues,  "certain  professional  forgers  cleverly  cut  out 
the  perforations,  put  in  a  patch  *  *  *  and  then  skilfully 
color  the  patch  to  agree  with  the  original,  so  that  it  be- 
comes a  very  difficult  matter  to  detect  the  alteration  even 
under  the  microscope.  This  done  and  the  writing  erased 


$51  to  $9,000 


THE  ORIGINAL  DRAFT  SPOILED  BY  THE  FORGER 

The  lower  photograph  is  of  a  draft  for  $85  purchased  by  a  member 
of  the  Alonzo  Whiteman  gang  in  March,  1 904,  for  the  purpose  of  "raising" 
it.  Whiteman  evidently  failed  to  produce  a  satisfactory  job,  but  he 
did  not  like  to  lose  $85  of  good  money;  so  he  touched  a  match  to  the 
paper  and  burned  it  as  shown.  He  then  sent  it  back  to  the  bank  with 
a  plausible  story  to  the  effect  that  it  had  been  burned  by  accident — 
after  the  manner  of  the  quotation  from  Inspector  Byrnes'  book  on  page 
24  and  asked  the  Hudson  River  Bank  to  give  him  in  its  place  two  new 
drafts,  one  for  $34  and  the  other  for  $51.  He  was  successful  with  the 
$51  draft,  for  it  is  shown  in  the  upper  photograph,  raised  to  $9,000 
and  cashed  in  another  city. 

[Illustrations  from  micro-photographs  made  by  Albert  S.  Osborn, 
the  handwriting  examiner,  who  was  retained  to  prove  that  the  draft 
had  been  raised.] 


WHEN  THE  BANKS  TREMBLED  23 

from  the  face  of  the  draft,  check,  letter  of  credit  or  bill  of 
exchange,  with  only  the  genuine  signature  left,  and  the 
tints  on  the  paper  restored,  the  forger  is  prepared  to  refill 
the  paper  for  any  amount  decided  upon." 

Another  old-time  thief-catcher  who  studied  the  forger 
in  his  natural  haunts  was  the  late  Inspector  Thomas  Byrnes, 
Chief  of  Detectives  in  New  York  three  decades  ago,  and 
whose  name  was  a  terror  to  evil-doers  of  his  day.  In  his 
book  of  rogues-gallery  faces  and  mem- 
oirs, Byrnes  paid  the  following  tribute  Inspector  Byrnes 

to  the  forgers  of  the  last  century:  Te"s  whj  the 

™,  ,      .       .  c  .  Forger  Escapes 

The  professional  forger  is  a  man         Conviction 

of  great  ability,  and  naturally  a  cun- 
ning and  suspicious  sort  of  individual.  Cautious  in  the 
extreme,  he  prefers  to  work  in  secret,  and  probably  never 
more  than  two  of  his  most  intimate  companions  know 
what  he  is  about.  *  *  *  *  So  guarded  is  he,  in  fact, 
that  he  never  permits  any  of  his  friends  to  enter  his  secret 
workshop.  It  is  the  proud  boast  of  one  of  the  most  notor- 
ious of  these  swindlers,  that  while  at  his  nefarious  work 
no  man,  woman  or  child  ever  saw  him  with  a  pen  in  his 
hand."  * 

Inspector  Byrnes  also  was  impressed  with  the  technical 
ability  of  the  high-class  forger,  for  on  page  13  of  his  book, 
following  the  paragraph  quoted  above,  he  says:  "Some 
of  the  most  prominent  forgers  are  chemists,  and  by  the  aid 
of  a  secret  mixture  of  acids  [NOTE]  they  are  able  to  erase 
the  figures  in  ink  from  the  face  of  notes  without  destroying 
or  damaging  the  paper.  Thus,  genuine  orders  upon  banks 

*  "Professional  Criminals  of  America,"  by  Thomas  Byrnes;  Cassell 
&  Company  Ltd.,  N.  Y.,  1886. 

NOTE — Since  Mr.  Byrnes'  day,  the  secrets  of  ink-eradicating 
chemicals  have  become  common  property  and  are  now  all  too  easily 
procurable  in  stores  for  a  few  cents.  Such  outfits  are  a  common  item 
of  equipment  on  bookkeepers'  desks.  Also,  since  that  day,  forgers 
have  perfected  their  methods  so  that  they  no  longer  leave  a  "blur,"  as 
mentioned  by  Byrnes.  They  now  manipulate  their  acids  in  such  a 
way  that  all  stains  are  washed  away,  leaving  no  trace. 


24  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

or  brokers  for  a  few  dollars  are  easily  raised  up  into  the 
thousands. 

"Sometimes,"  Byrnes  continues,  "it  happens  that  in 
altering  checks  the  chemicals  leave  a  blur  upon  the  paper 
that  cannot  be  erased.  As  the  notes,  although  for  small 
amounts,  are  genuine,  the  forger  not  willing  to  lose  money 
even  in  experimenting,  has  been  known  to  burn  off  the 
portion  that  he  had  unsuccessfully  tampered  with.  Then 
one  of  his  friends  writes  to  the  bank  by  which  the  draft  was 
issued,  stating  that  it  had  accidentally  been  partially 
burned.  To  confirm  the  accident  story,  the  fragments  of 
the  check  are  enclosed  in  the  envelope.  The  duplicate 
asked  for  is  generally  received  by  return  mail."  * 

Following  their  experience  with  Becker,  Wilkes,  White- 
man,  et  al.,  the  banks  became  profoundly  distrustful  of  the 
"figure   punches,"   and   such  devices 

Ancient  Inventions  gradually  banished  from  all  con- 

Jammed  Files  of  7-       u     i  •       u  T^U 

Patent  Office  servative  banking  houses.     That  was 

in  1896-1900,  and  from  that  day  to 

this  your  well-informed  banker  will  advise  against  either 
written  or  printed  figures  for  protection.  Some  leading 
banks  go  so  far  as  to  notify  their  correspondent  banks 
and  depositors  that  they  will  refuse  to  honor  checks  or 
drafts  having  the  amount  "punched"  in  figures,  unless 
it  is  also  stamped  or  written  in  words. 

The  records  of  the  Patent  Office,  beginning  with  the 
year  1837,  and  up  to  1900,  are  filled  to  bursting  with  the 
"claims"  of  hundreds  of  ambitious  inventors  who  sought 
to  fill  the  "long-felt-want"  for  a  form  of  negotiable  instru- 
ment that  would  defy  alteration.  Chief  of  these  inventions 
were  countless  special  forms  and  tinted  blanks;  "secret" 
designs  in  paper;  tinfoil  and  carbon  strips  inserted  between 
two  leaves  of  paper  and  cemented  together;  punch-and-die 
machines;  cipher  and  "advice"  systems,  etc. 

The  "letter-of-advice"  idea  did  indeed  find  some  favor 

*  A  good  example  of  the  draft  burned  "by  accident"  is  the  specimen 
attributed  to  Alonzo  Whiteman,  illustrated  on  page  22. 


WHEN  THE  BANKS  TREMBLED  25 

with  the  banks,  following  the  failure  of  the  "figure  punches." 
The  advice  system  consisted  of  sending  a  letter  each  day 
to  each  correspondent  bank,  giving  the  serial  number, 
amount  and  payee's  name  of  each  draft  issued  against  it 
for  that  day.  Some  of  the  banks  even  sent  a  duplicate  of 
each  draft  to  the  correspondent  bank,  and  for  a  time  it  was 
felt  that  real  protection  had  been  found. 

Quoting  Inspector  Byrnes'  book  again,  the  following 
extract  from  his  very  comprehensive  chapter  on  forgery 
explains  why  the  letter-of-advice  has  not  been  heard  of  in 
several  years: 

"A  member  of  the  gang  is  first  sent  to  purchase  two 
drafts  payable  at  a  bank  in  another  city.  One  draft  is 
made  out  for  a  small  amount,  and  the  other  for  a  con- 
siderable sum.  In  a  few  days  the  purchaser  returns  the 
larger  check  [draft]  to  the  bank,  saying  he  was  unable  to 
use  it  as  he  had  intended.  The  amount  it  calls  for  is  re- 
funded to  him  and  the  redeemed  check  in  most  cases 
destroyed.  Then,  having  a  clear  field  before  him,  the  forger 
forwards  the  small  draft,  raised  to  correspond  in  number, 
date,  amount,  etc.,  with  the  large  one,  to  some  distant 
city  for  collection.  As  the  genuine  draft  has  in  the  mean- 
time been  torn  up,  there  is  rarely  any  difficulty  in  getting 
the  raised  one  cashed,  and  sometimes  the  deceit  is  not 
discovered  at  the  bank  of  issue.  Many  cashiers  have  spent 
hours  in  going  over  their  books  on  account  of  a  shortage, 
and  all  the  trouble  and  annoyance  was  due  to  a  raised  check." 

So  the  "Advice  System"  followed  the  surf  ace- tinted 
paper  and  the  figure  protector  that  did  not  protect  into  the 
rubbish  heap  of  time.  During  the  latter  part  of  the  '90s, 
having  failed  to  find  an  efficient  means  of  protection,  the 
banks  became  extremely  cautious  about  selling  drafts  to 
strangers,  and  it  was  next  to  impossible  in  many  towns  for 
anyone  except  a  depositor  in  good  standing  to  secure  a 
draft. 

It  must  have  been  at  this  time  that  Albert  S.  Osborn, 


N 

26  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

the  eminent  handwriting  expert  and  examiner  of  disputed 
documents,  wrote  the  following  lines  in  the  introduction 
to  his  well  known  and  exhaustive  work  on  disputed 
writings  which  is  commonly  quoted  in  the  courts  as  a  very 
high  authority:  * 

"The  vast  increase  in  the  use  of  documents,"  says  Mr. 
Osborn,  "is  one  of  the  characteristics  of  modern  civilization, 
and  as  all  such  documents  are  subject  to  forgery,  spurious 

papers  are  constantly  being  produced, 

Handwritin  ranging  in  importance  from  one-dollar 

Expert  Says  of  orders  to  one-hundred  thousand-dollar 

Forgery  notes;  from  five-dollar  checks  to  five- 

million-dollar  wills.    It  would  be  well 

if  there  could  be  devised  a  better  method  of  safeguarding 
and  transferring  important  property  interests  than  by  the 
almost  exclusive  use  of  written  documents,  but  no  immedi- 
ate change  seems  probable. 

"In  many  instances,"  Mr.  Osborn  continues,  "the  dis- 
position of  billions  of  dollars  depends  upon  the  correct 
identification  of  a  single  signature.  This  .great  opportun- 
ity is  a  temptation  that  it  seems  impossible  for  some  to 
resist  who  would  not  commit  an  ordinary  crime.  Forgeries 
vary  in  perfection  all  the  way  from  the  clumsy  effort  which 
anyone  can  see  is  spurious,  up  to  the  finished  work  of  the 
adept  which  no  one  can  detect." 

The  decline  of  the  "draft-raising"  gangs  dates  from  the 
year  1899,  when  the  Todds  brought  out  the  original  "Not 
Over"  Protectograph,  stamping  the  once  famous  "limiting 
line."  This  device  was  a  long  step  in  advance  of  anything 
offered  the  bankers  up  to  that  time,  and  within  only  four 
or  five  years  it  was  generally  adopted  by  the  U.  S.  Treasury 
and  by  nearly  all  the  important  banks  in  this  and  other 
countries. 

The  banks  then  renewed  their  practice  of  selling  drafts 

*  "Questioned  Documents,"  A.  S.  Osborn;  pub.  Lawyers  Co-Op 
Pub.  Co.,  Rochester,  N.  Y.  1910. 


WHEN  THE  BANKS  TREMBLED 


27 


freely,  and  the  Protectograph  system  proved  so  effective 
that  such  a  thing  as  a  "raised"  draft  has  been  almost 
unheard-of  since  1904  or  1905. 


"  'Tis  opportunity    that 
makes  the  thief." 


28  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

Office  of  Discount  and  Deposit  of  the  Bank  of  the  United  States. 

D»!U.  Cts.     ~  BOSTON,    -   /'. -•/'  .  ?  f      lb  ;  fr' 


or  Beam, 

Dollars  M 


SIGNED  BY  DANIEL  WEBSTER 

An  interesting  old  bank  check,  drawn  long  before  the  days  of 
clearing  houses  and  check-protectors,  on  the  Second  Bank  of  the 
United  States,  Nov.  28,  1828.  Note  the  illustrious  name  that  appears 
in  the  signature  corner.  Daniel  Webster  never  had  to  worry  about 
his  checks  being  "raised,"  of  course,  because  there  were  no  "check 
raisers"  in  his  time.  But  changing  this  check  from  $750  to  $5,750, 
with  a  few  strokes  of  the  pen  and  without  rubbing  anything  out  would 
be  child's  play  for  the  modern  school  of  "penmen,"  as  shown  by  our 
imaginary  illustration  below.  Frederick  A.  Cleveland,  the  eminent 
economist  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  selected  this  Webster 
check  as  an  illustration  for  his  able  text  book,  "Funds  and  Their  Uses," 
in  which  he  speaks  of  it  as  "A  carefully  drawn  instrument."  Our 
"deadly  parallel"  illustration  shows  that  even  the  most  learned  academ- 
ists  are  no  match  for  an  up-to-date  "Jim-the- Penman." 

[Illustration  from  Cleveland's  "Funds  and  Their  Uses,"  by  permis- 
sion D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  pubs.,  N.  Y.,  1910]. 


U^ipt-      Office  of  Discount  and  Deposit  of  (he  Bunk  of  the  United  States. 
tSff7'f&       J>"Hs.  CU.  BOSTON,    ^f''/;it.1?      jy  2  fr 

1:'^- 

to     <~   {<-   t  or  JJtartv, 

^'  ''  '    \       )    ,''<•''/'  r-     7» 

{<   "Lr     /.  •-'  ^^»      -   '/  /  Uotlars  IUS 


TO    THE     CA5HIEE. 


WHAT  MIGHT  HAVE  HAPPENED 

Daniel  Webster's  $750  check,  as  it  would  look  when  a  modern 
"check-raiser"  got  through  with  it.  The  word  "Fifty"  is  easily  squeezed 
into  the  space  Webster  left  in  front  of  the  "Seven,"  completely  covering 
the  line  he  drew  in  that  space  to  prevent  such  a  trick.  The  figure  "5" 
is  added  in  front  of  the  "750."  Thus,  anyone  who  is  at  all  handy  with 
a  pen  could  add  $5,000  to  the  immortal  Daniel's  "carefully-drawn" 
check,  with  only  eight  strokes  of  the  pen,  and  -without  rubbing  any- 
thing out. 


Now  Comes  the  Golden  Age  of  the 
"Check  Raiser" 

HE  forgers  would  have  been  out  of  employment 
entirely  when  the  banks  adopted  the  Todd  idea, 
through  the  lack  of  material  to  work  on,  but  an 
unexpected  development  favored  them,  showing, 

perhaps,  that  the  Devil  does  in  fact  make  it  his  business 

to  "Find  some  work  for  idle  hands  to  do." 

This  new  factor  was  the  tremendous  increase  at  about 
that  time  in  the  circulation  of  individual  bank  checks  by 
all  of  the  larger  business  houses,  encouraged  by  the  latter- 
day  perfection  of  our  clearing-house  system,  and  the  better 
education  of  the  public  in  banking  methods,  which  is  a 
development  strictly  speaking  of  only  the  past  generation. 

It  might  be  possible  for  a  clever  historian  to  prove  that 
checks  and  similar  instruments  were  used  as  long  ago  as 
the  days  when  King  Solomon  paid  the 

household  bills  for  his  "seven  hundred     J*f»  9"*™  ™ re 

,,    „  i       r  r     Baked  into  Bricks 

wives.     Conant  speaks  ot  a  system  ot 

commercial  instruments  including  "transfer  checks"  as 
being  used  by  the  Assyrians  at  least  seven  centuries  before 
Christ.  But  he  admits  that  "Even  if  the  check  can  justly 
lay  claim  to  remote  antiquity  in  origin,  its  extensive  use 
is  a  development  strictly  of  modern  times."  * 

The  documents  of  those  leisurely  days  before  the  Christ- 
ian era  were  like  nothing  that  we  have  ever  seen  in  our 

*  "A  History  of  Modern  Banks  of  Issue,"  Charles  A.  Conant; 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  N.  Y.,  1909. 


30  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

times,  outside  of  museums.  The  "transfer  checks,"  for 
instance,  which  Conant  mentions,  were  "Inscribed  not  on 
paper  but  on  small  clay  tablets  about  the  size  of  a  piece 
of  toilet  soap"  and  baked  into  bricks  for  preservation. 

It  is  common  to  speak  of  the  Italian  bankers  as  having 
"invented"  the  check,  but  such  instruments  as  the  famous 
Florentine  bankers,  the  Dutch,  and  the  goldsmiths  of 
early  London  used,  were  probably  of  a  nature  quite  different 
from  our  flexible  little  "Pay  to  the  Order  of." 

The  first  authentic  mention  of  a  "cheque"  is  found  in 

English  records  about  the  year  1781,  when  English  bankers 

began  to  issue  what  we  now  refer  to 

No   "Clearings"        as   "cheques,"  bound   in    books,   but 

irnTt^sC°"ntry  they    were    more    commonly    called 

Unul  1853  ,,dryafts  „ 

From  the  year  1800  on,  the  word  "cheque"  gradually 
became  synonymous  with  "draft"  as  meaning  a  written 
order  on  a  banker.  Ultimately,  it  acquired  its  present 
meaning  and  has  a  statutory  definition  of  its  own — "A 
bill  of  exchange  drawn  on  a  banker  on  demand." 

Banking  did  not  come  into  its  own,  either  in  England 
or  America,  until  the  middle  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 
The  first  organized  system  for  clearing  "country"  checks 
was  established  in  London  in  1858.  Up  to  that  year  there 
was  no  recognized  method  of  handling  these  "country 
checks"  except  directly  from  the  issuer  to  his  creditor  and 
from  the  latter  to  the  particular  bank  on  which  it  was 
drawn. 

In  New  York,  up  to  1853,  it  was  the  custom  of  the 
messengers  and  clerks  from  several  banks  to  meet  daily 
at  a  certain  corner  in  Wall  street  to  exchange  notes  and 
other  items.  Out  of  this  grew  the  wonderful  New  York 
Clearing  House  of  today.  It  was  organized  in  November 
of  that  year,  at  a  meeting  attended  by  the  representatives 
of  52  local  banks.  Boston  followed  by  organizing  its  own 


GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER1'  31 

clearing  office  in  1856;  Philadelphia  in  1858,  and  Chicago 
came  into  line  in  1865 — so  that  at  last  there  was  an  organ- 
ized system  for  the  exchange  of  credits  between  city  and 
city  without  the  shipment  of  actual  currency,  except  in 
settlement  of  balances. 

Gradually  the  exchange  of  bank  checks  was  built  up, 
but  it  is  only  within  a  very  few  years  that  a  merchant  in 
Iowa  or  Tennessee  felt  free  to  make  remittance  to  his 
creditor  in  New  York  or  Chicago  by  personal  check. 

Along  in  1904,  or  thereabouts,  the  underworld  again  sat 
up  and  rubbed  its  eyes,  and  took  note  of  the  new  condition. 
Soon  a  brand-new  school  of  crime  to  take  advantage  of  the 
opportunity  was  being  developed  in 

Eastern  cities  beginning  with  New  Enter  the  Modern 
__  „  °  f  Check  Raiser" 

York.     Ihis    cult     was  made  up  at 

the  start  of  students  and  "disciples"  of  the  old-time  "draft 
raisers."  Among  them  were  "Doctor"  Doyle,  previously 
mentioned,  and  one  "Rough-Ocean"  Bill  Ford. 

Turning  their  undivided  attention  now  to  checks,  these 
up-to-date  penmen  discovered  that  a  much  wider  and  more 
profitable  field  than  ever  before  had  been  opened  before 
their  eyes.  The  checks  of  substantial  business  houses  were 
as  common  and  circulating  almost  as  freely  as  dollar  bills. 
The  mail  of  every  wholesale  and  manufacturing  concern 
in  New  York  was  loaded  down  with  checks.  It  was  actu- 
ally no  trick  at  all  to  secure  the  checks  of  responsible  con- 
cerns in  any  one  of  a  dozen  ways — and  to  "raise"  them  was 
so  easy  that  it  was  almost  beneath  the  dignity  of  a  "pro- 
fessional." 

First,  these  gangs  operated  by  sending  their  members 
out  to  secure  checks  by  various  tricks.  For  example,  they 
purchased  articles  of  varying  styles,  to  be  taken  home  "for 
selection,"  then  returned  the  ones  not  approved  and  re- 
ceived a  check  for  the  purchase  price.  Sometimes  they 
mailed  a  small  sum  of  money  to  a  reputable  concern,  ap- 


32  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

parently  in  payment  of  a  bill,  then  wrote  that  a  mistake 
had  been  made  and  requested  the  return  of  the  money — 
invariably  receiving  the  firm's  check  in  payment.  Or  they 
worked  a  game  like  the  following:  A  stranger  called  upon 
a  coal  merchant  and  ordered  coal,  saying  he  was  about  to 
move  into  a  certain  house  in  the  neighborhood  and  wished 
the  coal  delivered  the  following  week.  He  thoughtfully 
made  partial  payment  in  advance,  since  he  would  not  be 
at  the  new  address  for  several  days.  A  couple  of  days 
later,  before  the  time  set  for  the  delivery,  the  coal  merchant 

received  a  letter  saying  the  customer's 

Hundreds  of  Ways  business  had  called  him  to  another 
leec3/oT  city  and  he  would  be  unable  to  occupy 
Crooked  Purposes  the  house  he  had  arranged  for— so 

would  the  coal  man  please  return 

the  deposit?  Naturally,  the  coal  merchant  sent  his  check 
for  the  amount,  and  thought  nothing  of  the  matter  until 
a  month  or  so  later  when  his  bank  account  turned  out 
to  be  overdrawn. 

Endless  other  games  of  a  similar  nature  were  devised 
by  these  up-to-date  crooks,  and  some  of  them  were  extremely 
ingenious  in  the  schemes  devised  to  obtain  a  genuine  check 
without  arousing  the  suspicion  of  the  victim.  These  meth- 
ods were  too  slow,  however,  to  satisfy  the  high-class 
gangs,  and  they  finally  adopted  the  plan  of  stealing  checks 
from  the  mails  in  wholesale  quantities — a  scheme  that 
they  have  used  with  unvarying  success  from  that  day  to 
this. 

Briefly,  the  method  of  the  mail-box  gangs  is  based  on 
the  fact  that  mail  in  many  city  buildings  is  left  unguarded 
for  various  periods  of  time  every  business  day  in  the  year. 
The  length  of  the  period  matters  not  to  the  thieves.  It 
takes  only  a  minute,  for  they  have  practiced  the  trick  so 
long  that  it  is  almost  second  nature  to  them. 

The  heaviest  mail  in  the  large  cities  is  received  in  the 
first  morning  delivery.  It  is  an  axiom  with  the  check 


GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER1'  33 

thieves  that  the  average  city  concern  receives  large  numbers 
of  remittance  checks  from  its  out-of-town  customers  every 
morning  between  the  fifth  and  the  tenth  of  each  month. 
Now,  the  Postoffice  Department  has  a  rule  that  postmen 
are  not  required  to  deliver  mail  above  the  ground  floor  in 
loft  buildings  or  apartment  houses  that  have  no  passenger 
elevators.  Therefore,  the  tenants  on  all  the  upper  floors 
in  these  buildings  provide  themselves  with  private  mail 
boxes. 

Looking  into  the  lower  hallway  of  any  old-fashioned 
city  building,  one  may  see  these  rows  of  mail  boxes — from 
two  to  thirty,  according  to  the  number  of  tenants,  each 
bearing  the  name  of  its  owner. 

Here  is  where  the  forger  came  gloriously  into  his  own 
and  graduated  from  the  ranks  of  petty  thievery  into  the 
realms  of  "big  business."  The  post- 

man  on  his  early  morning  round,  steps     r» 

&.       ,  .     ..  Depositors  by  Mail 

into  the  hallway,  deposits  his   little 

bundle  of  letters  in  each  box,  then  blows  his  whistle  to 
summon  the  tenants  upstairs,  and  goes  on  his  way.  The 
boxes  are  usually  made  of  tin,  the  flimsiest  affairs  imagin- 
able. Even  if  they  were  fairly  strong,  it  would  make  little 
difference.  The  crook  carries  a  "jimmy"  which  will  wrench 
the  stoutest  lock  from  its  fastenings.  Failing  that,  in 
British  cities,  where  the  boxes  are  of  ponderous  construc- 
tion, he  gets  his  booty  just  the  same  with  a  little  "bird- 
lime" on  a  string. 

So,  the  postman  leaves  a  bundle  of  letters  in  the  box 
and  goes  his  way.  The  confederates  of  the  "check  raiser" 
have  been  watching  this  box  for  weeks,  perhaps,  and  have 
noted  that  most  of  the  firm's  remittances  from  customers 
arrive  about  the  tenth  of  the  month.  In  sneaks  the  thief 
with  his  "jimmy,"  breaks  open  the  cover  of  the  box,  and 
before  any  of  the  tenants  are  half-way  downstairs  in 
response  to  the  postman's  whistle,  he  is  off  and  away  with 
a  handful  of  letters  containing  genuine  checks  from  the 


34  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 


WHERE  DO  YOUR  CHECKS  GO? 

Photograph  of  typical  hallway  in  a  city  business  building,  showing 
letter  boxes  of  different  tenants,  in  which  their  mail  is  deposited  by 
postmen.  This  is  where  Boland  and  other  "professional"  swindlers 
secure  the  genuine  checks  of  good  business  men.  Mail  stays  in  these 
little  tin  boxes  for  hours  at  a  time,  at  the  mercy  of  the  first  "crook" 
who  happens  along  with  a  screw  driver  and  the  yearning  for  "easy 
money." 


GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER1'  35 

reputable  merchants  of  Worcester,  Oskaloosa  and  Chatta- 
nooga. 

This,  briefly,  is  the  Twentieth-Century  method  of  "easy 
graft"  invented  and  developed  to  perfection  by  such  of 
the  old-timers  as  outlived  Pinkerton  and  Byrnes.  The 
actual  stealing  of  the  letters  is  carried  on  consistently  by 
youths  hired  for  the  purpose  and  never  brought  into  con- 
tact with  any  of  the  permanent  members  of  the  gang. 

When  one  of  these  young  rascals  is  caught  red-handed,  as 
sometimes  happens,  it  is  seldom  that 
he  can  give  any  information  as  to  the     Stealing  Whole 

whereabouts  or  identity  of  his  princi-      TrunkMs  °f  <** 

,  -ill  i       uine  Lnecks  in  a 

pals,    bomewhere  in  the  background,      Single  Day 

working  alone  in  an  apartment  reek- 
ing with  opium  and  chemicals,  is  the  master,  the  "Scratchier," 
as  the  forger  is  called  in  underworld  slang.  Whole  arm- 
fuls,  trunkfuls,  of  letters  are  brought  to  his  headquarters. 
He  sorts  them  out  for  remittances,  burning  the  letters,  and 
keeping  only  the  checks  that  suit  his  purpose.  His  pro- 
cedure is  always  the  same: 

First,  he  selects  only  checks  bearing  the  printed  forms 
of  concerns  having  the  earmarks  of  substance  and  good 
credit.  Common  "counter  checks"  not  bearing  the  signer's 
printed  form  are  contemptuously  tossed  aside,  as  well  as 
those  protected  with  the  Protectograph. 

The  leaders  of  these  gangs  seldom  make  a  mistake. 
Certainly,  they  have  access  to  the  rating  books  of  Dun  or 
Bradstreet,  and  they  display  excellent  judgment  in  refusing 
to  bother  with  documents  stamped  with  the  Todd  machine. 

Many  voluntary  testimonials  have  been  received  from 
convicted  forgers,  testifying  to  this,  and  some  of  them 
relating  cases  where  they  had  destroyed  checks  in  attempt- 
ing to  remove  the  "shredded"  Protectograph  line. 

Having  accumulated  a  large  supply  of  checks  that 
answer  his  purpose,  the  "Scratcher"  proceeds  to  wash  them 
off  with  acid,  removing  the  date,  number,  name  of  payee 
and  amount.  When  he  has  finished  his  "wash,"  nothing 


S  S 


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iJlal^lu 


GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER"      37 

is  left  of  the  original  checks  except  the  printed  forms  and 
the  genuine  signatures.  In  other  words,  by  using  ink 
eradicator,  the  forger  provides  himself  at  will  with  a  whole- 
sale supply  of  genuine  checks  "Signed  in  blank" — and  the 
signers  selected  to  represent  the  highest  credit. 

(Imagine  a  good  business  man  signing  a  check  in  blank 
and  handing  it  to  a  "crook"  with  instructions  to  fill  it  out 
to  suit  himself!  Yet  that  is  what  every  business  man  un- 
consciously does,  in  effect,  when  he  issues  a  check  bearing 
his  signature  and  without  the  protection  of  the  Protecto- 
graph.) 

Now,  the  "Scratcher"  takes  these  blank  checks,  and 
proceeds  very  methodically  to  fill  in  the  blanks  to  suit 
himself.    He  stamps  in  a  new  number 
—usually  about  one  or  two  hundred      giving  Checks 

,u.i        ,,          .       .  ,  ~  Signed  in  Blank 

numbers  higher  than  the  old  one.   On      tQ  ftotorious 

the  line  "Pay  to  the  Order  of"  he  fills      Swindlers 
in  "Cash"    or    "Bearer."     On  the 

amount  line  he  writes  a  large  amount,  usually  about 
"Three  Hundred  and  Eighty  Dollars" — which  seems  to 
be  for  some  reason  a  "lucky"  amount  with  many  profes- 
sionals. Thus,  he  has  a  check  that  is  apparently  perfectly 
genuine,  payable  to  himself  or  to  "Cash,"  for  a  sum  that 
will  amply  repay  his  efforts  and  risk.  You  notice  he  leaves 
the  date  line  blank.  That  comes  later. 

Now,  having  accumulated  dozens  or  hundreds  of  these 
checks,  the  gang  is  ready  to  "cash  in."  For  this  function 
an  entirely  different  set  of  confederates  is  chosen;  and, 
again,  these  men  are  kept  in  ignorance  of  the  identity  of 
the  rest  of  the  gang.  These  new  men  are  known  as  "pre- 
senters," and  they  might  be  called  travelling  collectors. 
A  "presenter"  is  given  a  route,  covering  several  different 
cities  in  the  South,  Northwest,  New  England,  or  the  South- 
west, as  the  case  may  be.  For  each  city  on  his  route  he 
has  one  or  more  checks  payable  at  banks  in  that  particular 
city.  For  example,  a  check  of  the  Jones  Cigar  Co.,  Grand 
Rapids,  is  stolen  from  the  mails  of  the  Blank  Envelope  Co., 


38       PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 


Wholesale  ^  CVlOnQlllM  ^Dresses* 

and  Coats  207  WEST  MAIN  STREET  »nd  Sklrti 


Oklahoma  City,  Okla.. 

October  12,  1917. 


Todd  Protectograph  Company. 
Rochester,  N.Y. 

Dear  Sirs:- 

We  hope  our  experience  with  that  $29. 57 
check  raised  to  $380.  will  serve  as  a  warning  to  other 
merchants  and  show  them  that  a  bank's  guarantee 
against  a  loss  on  a  raised  check  is  not  valid,  even  in 
writing,  because  there  is  no  way  to  prove  whether  a 
check  has  been  raised  or  not. 

You  remember  we  were  ready  to  order  a  Pro- 
tectograph from  your  salesman  along  in  1906.  but  our 
banker  said  it  was  a  waste  of  money,  as  we  had  never 
had  a  check  raised,  and  if  such  an  "Improbable"  thing 
should  happen  the  bank  would  have  to  stand  it.   So 
that  is  why  we  didn't  have  a  Protectograph  when  we 
drew  this  check  in  September,  1907,  to  Alfred  L.  Simon 
&  Co..  wholesale  feathers.  New  York. 

The  check  was  stolen  from  Simon  &  Co . ' s  mail 
and  on  Oct.  7  it  was  presented  right  at  our  bank  in 
Knoxville,  Tenn.,  by  some  strange  person.   Simon  & 
Co. 's  name  had  been  taken  out  and  changed  to  "Bearer." 
The  amount  had  been  altered  from  $29.57  to  $380.   The 
date  was  changed  to  that  very  day.   The  "Strange 
Person"  got  the  money  and  has  never  been  seen  since. 

Nov.  1,  our  balance  was  over  $300.  short, 
and  I  showed  this  $380.  check  to  the  President  of  our 

bank.   I  said,  "Mr.  ,  you  know  I  never  drew  a 

check  to  bearer  in  my  life,  and  I  guess  you'll  have  to 
make  good  on  that  check  raising  agreement  sooner  than 
you  expected. " 

Did  my  banker  turn  to  the  ledger  and  credit 
me  with  $380.?  He  did  not.   He  said  that  my  signature 
was  genuine  and  I  would  have  to  stand  the  loss.   Then 
I  transferred  my  account  from  his  bank  and  entered 
suit,  and  after  a  hard  fought  case  the  Tennessee 
courts  decided  in  favor  of  the  bank  and  we  lost.   We 
are  out  the  whole  $380.,  as  we  had  to  send  another 
check  to  Simon  &  Co.,  and  since  that  time  we  have 
never  signed  a  check  until  it  was  protected  with  a 
Todd  Machine. 

T.  TOBIAS  &  SON 
Per 


Letter  from  a  successful  merchant  rated  at  over  $100,000  in  Dun's, 
who  sued  his  bank  to  fulfil  an  alleged  agreement  to  the  effect  that  the 
bank  would  be  responsible  in  case  of  a  "raised"  check.  (The  check, 
with  an  account  of  the  interesting  circumstances,  appears  on  page  36). 


GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER11  39 

New  York  City.  It  has  been  changed  from  "Blank  Envel- 
ope Co."  to  "Cash"  and  the  amount  "raised"  from 
$14.22  to  $380.00.  So  the  "presenter"  is  going  to  stop  at 
Grand  Rapids  on  this  trip,  and  he  will  call  at  the  State 
Bank  in  that  city,  because  that  is  the  bank  on  which  this 
check  is  drawn,  and  the  signature  of  Jones  Cigar  Co.  is 
known  and  has  a  value  in  Grand  Rapids  "as  good  as  gold." 

In  the  course  of  time,  Mr.  Presenter  reaches  Grand 
Rapids.  It  is  Feb.  24,  1916.  The  check  was  originally 
dated  Dec.  3,  1915,  perhaps,  but  the  date  line  is  now  blank. 
Mr.  Presenter  takes  a  rubber-stamp  outfit  from  his  grip 
and  stamps  in  Feb.  24,  1916.  He  now  has  a  check  that  to 
all  intents  and  appearances  was  issued  by  the  Jones  Cigar 
Co.  an  hour  or  so  ago,  payable  to  "Cash"  for  $380. 

He  rushes  into  the  State  Bank  in 

his  shirt  sleeves  and  without  a  hat.     ^ow  the  Crooks 
TT      «.          ,,.       ,      ,      ,  Put  the  Bank  Teller 

He    flings    this    check   down    on    the     ^  a  fj0ie» 

counter  and  breathlessly  explains  that 

he  is  a  clerk  at  the  Jones  office,  that  Mr.  Jones  just  re- 
ceived a  telegram  calling  him  to  Minneapolis  on  a  matter 
of  life  and  death,  that  Mr.  Jones  has  just  three  minutes 
in  which  to  catch  the  only  train  for  Minneapolis,  and  that 
'  he  is  waiting  at  the  station  for  the  clerk  to  bring  the  pro- 
ceeds of  the  check  so  that  he  may  take  the  train  and  keep 
the  appointment. 

The  bank  teller  hurriedly  scans  the  check.  It  looks  all 
right,  except  that  the  Jones  people  have  never  been  known 
to  draw  checks  to  strangers  since  they  were  in  business. 
He  looks  at  the  supposed  clerk,  and  fails  to  recognize  him 
as  anyone  he  has  ever  seen  before.  He  takes  the  check  to 
his  card-index  file.  Yes,  the  signature  is  undoubtedly 
genuine,  and  the  check  is  drawn  on  the  genuine  Jones 
Cigar  Co.  printed  form.  He  asks  the  "clerk"  to  be  identi- 
fied, but  the  latter  is  jumping  from  one  foot  to  the  other 
with  his  watch  in  his  hand,  and  reminding  the  teller  that 
he  has  only  two  minutes  in  which  to  reach  the  depot,  and 
that  if  Mr.  Jones  loses  his  train  it  will  be  as  much  as  his 


40  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

job  is  worth.  The  teller  can  see,  also,  that  if  Mr.  Jones 
loses  his  train  through  failure  of  the  bank  to  honor  his 
check  it  may  mean  a  lawsuit  with  the  Jones  people  which 
will  cost  his  bank  many  times  $380.  He  mentally  offers 
up  a  prayer  that  it  is  alright,  hands  over  the  money,  and 
"Mr.  Presenter"  flies  out  of  the  door,  never  to  be  seen  again. 

It  may  be  a  month  later  that  the  Jones  passbook  is 

balanced,  and  immediately  comes  a  claim  from  the  concern 

that   their   balance   is    three-hundred-and-sixty-something 

short.    Later,  they  learn  from  the  Blank  Envelope  people 

that  the  check  mailed  to  them  never  arrived — so  their  loss 

is    $380.      They   always   assume   that   the    $380   "Cash" 

check  is  the  one  mailed  to  the  envelope  concern,  but  they 

cannot  prove  it,  because  the  forger  has  done  his  work  so 

well  that  no  traces  whatever  of  the  original  writing  remain. 

_  It  is  of  no  use  to  call  attention  to  the 

Month's  Leeway         difference  in  hand-writing  between  the 

body  of  the  check  and  the  signature, 

because  the  man  who  signs  the  checks  in  the  average 
concern  very  seldom  fills  out  the  amount.  The  difference 
in  ink  means  nothing,  because  a  dozen  different  kinds  of 
ink  may  be  used  in  one  office.  The  crook  has  fortified 
himself  at  every  point.  Unless  he  is  caught  red-handed  at 
the  bank  window  his  chances  of  "getting  away  with  it" 
are  almost  100  per  cent. ;  and  no  teller  has  ever  had  the  nerve 
to  turn  down  a  genuine  signature  when  presented  in  this 
way  with  a  plausible  life-and-death  story  to  explain  the 
circumstances.  (See  page  36). 

There  have  been  cases  where  the  mail-box  gangs 
operated  in  one  section  of  New  York  and  Boston  for  months 
at  a  time,  stealing  literally  thousands  of  checks  monthly, 
and  none  of  the  principals  were  ever  caught  "with  the 
goods." 

One  of  the  first  arrests  ever  made  in  connection  with 
the  work  of  the  mail-box  gangs  was  that  of  William  Boland, 
a  mere  slip  of  a  boy,  in  1905.  A  detective  set  to  watch  for 
mail  robbers  caught  Boland  in  the  act  of  rifling  a  mail  box 


GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER"  41 

in  the  wholesale  garment  section  of  lower  New  York.  It 
was  suspected  that  Boland  was  employed  by  "Rough- 
Ocean"  Ford,  but  the  police  could  not  secure  any  evidence 
to  substantiate  this  belief,  and  Boland  alone  went  to  a 
reformatory  for  a  few  months.  When  he  was  released, 
he  immediately  set  to  work  to  organize  a  gang  of  his  own. 
That  was  over  a  dozen  years  ago,  and  he  has  been  at  it 
constantly  ever  since.  His  confederates,  both  letter  thieves 
and  "presenters,"  have  been  caught  several  times,  but 
usually  they  have  been  discharged  for  lack  of  evidence, 
and  only  once  has  the  law  been  able  to  trace  the  crime  to 
Boland 's  door.  That  once  was  in  Boston,  in  1909,  when  a 
little  fellow  caught  pilfering  letters 
from  a  box  near  the  Common  broke  Boland  Master 
,  jitt  r  •  u  j  Scratcher  of  the 

down  and  led  the  way  to  a  furnished       present  Day 

apartment  in  Yarmouth  street,  where 

they  found  Boland,  living  under  the  name  of  Gordon,  sur- 
rounded by  stacks  and  stacks  of  rifled  letters  and  carefully 
"raised"  checks,  together  with  the  inevitable  opium  lay- 
out and  mechanical  paraphernalia  of  the  "professional." 
The  Boston  police  say  that  they  recovered  enough  checks 
and  letters  from  this  apartment  to  fill  several  large  trunks. 
They  were  scattered  all  over  the  apartment  and  stuffed 
in  bales  inside  the  fireplace. 

A  partial  list  furnished  by  the  Boston  police  shows  that 
the  checks  already  "raised"  and  ready  for  the  "presenters" 
to  make  their  collecting  trips  came  from  points  as  widely 
scattered  as  Shawmut,  R.  I.;  Charleston,  S.  C.;  Minneapo- 
lis, Minn.,  and  Atchison,  Kan.  This  is  mentioned  merely 
to  show  that  you  cannot  tell  what  may  happen  to  the 
checks  you  issue  to  "strictly  responsible  people." 

They  sent  Boland  over  the  road  again,  of  course,  for 
this  wholesale  enterprise,  but  it  was  only  a  few  years 
before  he  was  at  large,  having  earned  a  short  sentence  by 
good  behavior — and  since  his  release  in  1911  he  has  been 
constantly  at  work  floating  his  spurious  checks  in  large 
quantities,  without  spending  another  day  behind  the  bars. 


42  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

The  police  in  New  York  say  they  keep  Boland's  address 
on  file  and  can  take  him  at  any  time  the  courts  will  accept 
their  evidence  against  him,  but  it  seems  there  are  unfortu- 
nate technicalities  in  our  laws  which  make  it  almost  im- 
possible to  establish  satisfactory  evidence  of  the  connection 
between  the  "Scratcher"  on  the  one  hand  and  the  two  dif- 
ferent sets  of  confederates  who  serve  him  on  the  other. 

As  an  example  of  this,  one  of  the  mail-box  gangs,  prob- 
ably Boland's,  took  a  notion  a  few  years  ago  to  operate 
against  the  big  theatrical  producers  on  Broadway.  They 
took  pains  to  learn  that  the  theatrical  folk  had  a  habit  of 

n*  ^  T.      »       Paymg  bills  for  sundry  supplies  at  a 
George  M.  Cohans  .      .       .      ,  t_     Vu 

Check  Goes  Wrong      certam  time  ln  the  month'    They  then 
watched  the  mail  box  of  a  small  printer 

in  Chambers  street,  who  was  known  to  have  many  custom- 
erg  among  the  leading  theatrical  concerns.  One  day, 
when  the  grist  of  letters  deposited  in  this  printer's  mail 
box  looked  inviting,  the  thieves  broke  it  open  and  secured 
two  or  three  dozen  checks  bearing  names  that  are  household 
words  all  over  America.  They  "raised"  these  little  checks 
to  the  familiar  $380  each,  and  flooded  the  neighborhood  of 
Forty-second  street  with  them.  Among  the  victims  were 
our  own  George  M.  Cohan,  the  Broadway  Theatre,  and 
many  others. 

One  of  the  presenters  in  this  gang  was  caught,  right  at 
the  teller's  window,  counting  out  the  proceeds  of  one  of 
these  checks.  He  dragged  in  two  or  three  of  his  fellow  pre- 
senters, and  a  long  trial  followed,  as  the  authorities  were 
determined  to  make  an  example.  Famous  hand-writing 
experts  were  employed,  every  effort  was  made  to  secure  a 
conviction,  but  the  whole  case  finally  failed,  because  they 
couldn't  connect  the  presenters  with  the  other  ends  of 
the  gang. 

The  case  of  Boland  is  dealt  with  here  at  length  only 
because  his  work  is  typical  of  that  of  many  other  "pro- 
fessionals" of  the  present  day,  all  extremely  active,  and  all 
using  about  the  same  methods.  It  is  said  that  whenever 


GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER"  43 

one  of  these  master  forgers  is  "sent  away,"  he  invariably 
leaves  "pupils"  to  carry  on  his  work  and  supply  funds  for 
high-priced  lawyers  to  defeat  the  ends  of  justice. 

By  the  end  of  1909,  the  universal  circulation  of  checks 
had  grown  to  such  an  extent  that  nearly  every  business 
house  of  any  size  was  using  checks  in  payment  of  bills,  and 
the  "check-raising"  fraternity  had  multiplied  until  check 
frauds  were  as  common  as  shoplifting. 

Long  before  all  the  banks  had  supplied  themselves  with 
the  "Not  Over"  Protectograph,  the  demand  from  larger 
manufacturers  and  jobbers  for  Todd  machines  began  to 
make  itself  felt.  Then,  as  fast  as  the 
larger  concerns  supplied  themselves 
with  Todd  protection,  the  crooks  were  prom 
driven  to  operate  on  smaller  and 

smaller  ones,  until  even  the  minor  retail  establishments, 
corner  groceries  and  butcher  shops,  were  forced  to  protect 
themselves  against  this  amazing  form  of  fraud. 

In  1908  there  were  57,375  Todd  machines  in  use.  In 
1913  the  number  had  grown  to  223,110,  and  was  increasing 
at  the  rate  of  75,000  machines  yearly.  By  this  time  people 
had  stopped  thinking  of  check  protection  as  a  "fad,"  and 
began  to  realize  that,  in  a  country  where  most  of  the  busi- 
ness is  done  by  check,  you  can't  ignore  a  condition  which 
makes  the  average  check  as  uncertain  and  unreliable  as 
a  balmy  day  in  spring.  The  public  no  longer  considered 
any  old  protection  "good  enough";  it  demanded  the  best 
and  most  scientific  form  of  security  that  could  be  provided. 

Another  most  interesting  development  that  tended  to 
make  business  men  uneasy  about  their  checks  was  the 
advent  of  the  "amateur"  operator,  and  the  remarkable 
growth  of  check  frauds  committed  from  the  "inside"  by 
clerks,  bookkeepers,  salesmen  and  other  trusted  em- 
ployees. While  the  number  of  "professional"  jobs  has  been 
increasing,  the  element  of  "amateur"  operations  has 


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GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER"  45 

served  even  more  to  multiply  the  number  of  "raised" 
checks  enormously. 

The  press  of  the  United  States,  Canada,  Great  Britain, 
Australia,  and  all  the  Latin-American  countries,  carries 
daily  accounts  of  amazing  frauds  based  on  "raised"  checks. 
Such  headlines  as  "Bookkeeper  Swindles  Employer  out  of 
Thousands";  "Another  Clerk  Gone  Wrong";  "Salesman 
Passes  Bogus  Checks,"  etc.,  are  all  too  common,  and  the 
"raised"  check  is  usually  somewhere  at  the  bottom  of 
these  cases. 

Many  cases  have  been  reported  recently  where  honest 
business  men  were  robbed  consistently  for  periods  covering 
weeks  and  months  at  a  time,  before 

the  extravagant  habits  of  some  trusted       5j*m!rejfe  °f 

.  ij      ' •         *•     +•  j    u          Checks    Raised" 

employee  led  to  investigation  and  the       .     Qne  Employee 

discovery  that  large  numbers  of  the 

employer's  checks  had  been  altered.  The  subtlety  of 
this  form  of  fraud,  when  committed  from  the  "inside," 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  many  employees  caught  almost 
red-handed  in  their  operations  can  still  escape  conviction. 
This  is  due  to  the  cunning  of  the  culprit  in  destroying  the 
stubs  and  the  altered  checks  themselves  as  fast  as  they 
come  back  from  the  bank,  thus  removing  everything  in 
the  way  of  documentary  evidence. 

In  a  recent  case,  a  small  concern  in  Chicago  made  an 
audit  of  its  books  to  find  out  where  its  profits  had  gone, 
and  discovered  that  hundreds  of  its  checks  had  probably 
been  "raised"  during  the  year  1916,  causing  a  loss  of 
about  $5,000.  The  resulting  investigation  led  to  a  woman 
in  the  office  as  the  thief.  Nearly  all  the  checks  had  been 
destroyed,  however,  and  the  stubs  could  not  be  found.  There 
would  have  been  no  evidence  whatever  but  for  the  fact 
that  this  woman  had  carelessly  forgotten  to  destroy  two 
or  three  of  the  checks.  One  of  them  is  reproduced  on  page 
44.  The  amazing  facts  in  this  case  are  recorded  in  a 
letter  to  the  Todd  Company  from  Chas.  F.  Preston,  the 


46  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

man  who  lost  $5,000  in  a  year  by  the  dishonesty  of  this 
employee. 

This  Preston  case  is  typical  of  hundreds  and  thousands 
of  others  in  which  unsuspecting  business  men  have  safe- 
guarded themselves  against  fire,  burglary,  and  other  even- 
tualities, but  forgot  to  lock  the  one  wide-open  door  that 
leads  to  the  bank  account. 

A  very  common  source  of  loss  is  the  salary  or  expense 
check  mailed  to  the  salesman  "on  the  road."  Even  sup- 
posing the  salesman  himself  to  be  able  to  resist  temptation 
at  a  time  when  he  is  far  from  home  and  short  of  funds, 
there  still  remain  the  hotelmen,  saloonkeepers  and  others 
who  often  cash  checks  as  an  accomodation,  and  who  some- 
times prove  willing  to  "take  a  chance." 

Payroll  checks  are  particularly  susceptible  to  Jraud, 
because  they  pass  from  hand  to  hand  almost  like  currency, 
and  it  is  often  impossible  to  determine  which  one  of  several 

indorsers  on  such  a  check  is  the  guilty 
1  he  1  rick  ,—  .  .  , ,  T    . 

Endorsement  one'    The  employer  who  says    I  give 

checks  only  to  responsible  people," 

should  step  into  the  average  small  business  establishment 
on  a  pay  day  and  see  where  the  busy  proprietor  throws  the 
pay  checks  as  he  cashes  them. 

Generally  speaking,  it  is  no  trick  at  all  to  secure  genuine 
checks  from  the  average  concern,  entirely  apart  from  the 
methods  of  the  "professional"  and  the  mail-box  thieves. 
Again,  the  man  who  is  determined  to  secure  money  dis- 
honestly in  this  way  and  finds  any  difficulty  in  passing  a 
"raised"  check,  usually  finds  it  possible  to  secure  the 
signer's  indorsement  on  the  back  of  his  own  check.  This 
game  has  been  worked  throughout  the  West  and  Canada 
with  great  success — to  such  an  extent,  in  fact,  that  many 
business  men  will  no  longer  endorse  checks,  even  for  de- 
posit, until  they  have  protected  them. 

Wm.  J.  Burns,  the  noted  detective,  in  some  of  his  ad- 
dresses to  the  Bankers  Association,  has  outlined  dozens  of 


GOLDEN  AGE  OF  THE  "CHECK  RAISER"  47 

schemes  employed  in  securing  genuine  checks  for  purpose 
of  alteration — some  of  which  would  cause  almost  any 
business  man  to  scratch  his  head  and  wonder  how  his 
checks  have  ever  managed  to  escape  the  clutches  of  the 
swindlers. 

One  of  the  latest  developments  in  the  activities  of  the 
' 'check-raisers"  seeking  constantly  for  "raw  material,"  is 
found  in  the  countless  cases  in  which  the  victims  were 
farmers.  It  has  grown  to  be  quite  common  for  swindlers 
of  a  certain  class  to  pretend  that  they  are  experienced  farm 
hands,  and  to  travel  through  agri- 
cultural sections  hiring  out  for  tern-  Farmers  and  Small 
porary  employment  during  busy  sea-  Concerns  Who 

J  -,   J      J .     .        ,  ..        Issue  the  Fewest 

sons.    The    unlucky    farmer    usually      Checks  Carry  the 
discovers  in  a  day  or  two    that    his     Biggest  Risk 
' 'experienced "  hands   are  not   worth 

their  salt.  He  makes  short  work  of  paying  them  off,  usually 
with  a  check,  which  is  exactly  what  the  hands  hired  out 
for  in  the  first  place.  A  check  for  $5  or  $6  representing 
two  days'  labor  is  better  to  them  than  a  month's  steady 
employment,  because  they  multiply  the  face  of  the  checks 
by  ten,  cashing  them  for  $50  or  $60  each  at  the  village 
stores  or  banks,  and  thus  secure  several  large  sums  every 
month.  This  means  a  big  income  for  an  active  swindler, 
and  with  very  little  risk,  as  he  is  usually  far  away  before 
the  farmer  goes  into  town  to  have  his  bank  book  balanced 
and  discovers  his  loss. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  risk  of  loss  through 
altered  paper  fell  mainly  upon  the  banks.  Then  the  banks 
adopted  the  Protectograph,  and  thereby  transferred  the 
risk  to  the  larger  business  houses.  Years  ago,  the  larger 
business  firms  in  every  line  adopted  Todd  protection — so 
that  today  the  concern  or  individual  of  any  prominence 
in  a  community  who  is  not  using  the  Todd  system  is  a 
rare  exception  and  a  shining  mark  for  the  "check  raisers." 

There  are  over  600,000  Todd  machines  in  use,  which 
takes  care  of  the  great  majority  of  the  concerns  rated  in 


48  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

five  figures  or  over — in  other  words,  the  concerns  that  issue 
the  majority  of  the  checks.  Those  smaller  concerns, 
issuing  a  comparatively  few  checks,  and  not  using  adequate 
protection,  are  carrying  all  the  risk.  "Check-raising" 
frauds  have  increased  a  thousand  fold  in  the  past  few  years 
• — and  yet  there  are  fewer  concerns  to  carry  that  risk,  be- 
cause all  of  it  falls  upon  the  comparative  few  who  are  not 
protected.  Every  time  a  man's  neighbor  installs  a  Todd 
machine,  that  man's  risk  goes  up  a  hundred  per  cent., 
unless  he,  too,  follows  his  neighbor's  example. 

What  is  the  answer?  There  are,  say,  something  over 
six  billion  checks  issued  in  this  country  yearly.  Probably 

the  great  majority  of  these  are  issued 

A  Risk  that  No  b    the  la         firms— Todd-protected, 

Insurance  Com-  ,  ,       ,  .      -  . 

pany  Would  Even  because  the  blS  firms  d°  not  take 
Consider  chances  on  "check  raising"  or  any 

other  common   form  of    fraud,    and 

they  do  not  issue  checks  under  any  circumstances  without 
protection.  And  yet,  of  the  minority  that  go  out  without 
protection  every  year,  thousands  are  "raised." 

So  the  man  issuing  unprotected  checks  now  stands  in  a 
small  circle  that  is  growing  smaller  every  time  a  Todd 
machine  is  sold.  It  finally  narrows  down  to  a  point  where 
a  few  unprogressive,  or  careless,  business  and  professional 
men  and  farmers  are  carrying  the  whole  weight  of  the 
world's  "check-raising"  activities  on  their  own  shoulders 
and  no  insurance  company  would  accept  them  as  a  risk 
under  any  conditions. 


The  Conception  of  the  Protectograph 

N  THE  year  1899,  when  the  old-time  "draft  raisers" 
were  at  the  height  of  their  success,  the  Todd 
brothers  in  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  were  working  out 
their  idea  of  a  new  mechanical  device  that  would 
afford  thorough  protection  for  the  amounts  of  bank  drafts 
and  other  bills  of  exchange. 

The  Todds  were  familiar  with  the  banking  field  and 
knew  that  bankers  were  losing  considerable  revenue  through 
their  fear  of  selling  drafts  to  the  public.  Also,  the  tremen- 
dous growth  of  the  country's  interstate  trade  just  at  that 
period  was  making  it  most  essential  to  develop  some  uni- 
versal system  of  credit  exchange  that  could  be  depended 
upon  to  defy  fraud  and  errors  in  amounts  of  credit  instru- 
ments. Moreover,  with  all  their  care,  the  banks  still  stood 
to  lose  large  sums  on  every  draft  they  issued,  and  the 
"draft-raising"  gangs  were  active  everywhere. 

It  was  the  fundamental  Todd  idea  that  protection  should 
consist  of  words  (instead  of  figures)  representing  the  amount 
and  that  the  words  should  be  forced  or  macerated  into  the 
paper  in  some  way,  under  pressure.  It  was  realized  that 
the  old  method  of  "perforating"  or  "punching"  something 
out  of  the  paper  would  not  answer.  The  " professionals"  had 
proved  conclusively  that  anything  taken  out  of  the  paper 
could  be  restored — that  anything  added  to  it  could  be 
erased.  So  it  was  proposed  that  ink  be  forced  into  the 
paper,  under  pressure,  making  it  a  part  of  the  fibre  of  the 
document. 

This,  roughly,  was  the  Todd  idea,  on  which  has  been 
built  a  business  that  covers  the  world  and  is  known  as 


Rl  STATE  TEWTENTI  AIT 


WARDENS  OFFICE.^ 


December  Seventh,    1912;. 


HENRY  ANDRAE,  WARDEN 

PORTER  GILVIN,  DEPUTY  WARDEN 

A  P  GRIMSHAW,  CHIEF  CLERK 

A  H  MYERDICK,  PHYSICIAN 

H  E  EVENS,  ASS'T  CHIEF  CLERK 

J  H  LIVINGSTON,  SUP'T  BERTILION  DEPT. 

TO  WHOM  IT  MAY  CONCERN  :- 

The  subject  of  check  fraud  has  im- 
pressed itself  very  forcibly  upon  us  in  the  last 
few  years.   We  now  have  confined  in  the  State 
Penitentiary  231  convicts  serving  time  from  this 
cause;  this  being  about  10$  of  total  number  of 
male  convicts  enrolled. 

The  American  Bankers  Association,  also 
the  banks  individually  are  advising  the  public  to 
use,  all  possible  care  and  precaution  in  preventing 
this  crime. 

The  only  hope  to  eliminate  this  danger  is 
by  the  co-operation  of  the  public,  who  should  do  all 
in  their  power,  to  protect  and  secure  their  signa- 
ture on  negotiable  papers  before  it  leaves  their 
hands. 

This  institution  is  using  the  PROTECTOGRAPH, 
which  we  consider  the  most  effectual  protection  to 
be  had. 

Yours  very  truly, 


Remove  the  "Opportunity  that  Makes 
the  Thief." 

Letters  similar  to  the  above  have  been 
received  from  many  penal  and  correc- 
tional institutions. 


WARDEN. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  PROTECTOGRAPH         51 

standard  wherever  checks,  drafts  or  other  bills-of-exchange 
are  issued. 

It  was  in  June,  1899,  that  they  succeeded  in  designing  a 
model  which  pleased  them,  and  the  first  machine  was  ready 
for  the  market  in  the  fall  of  that  year.  It  was,  naturally, 
a  rather  crude  affair  at  first,  but  it  represented  the  highest 
development  of  the  art  of  check  protection  at  that  day — 
just  as  the  successive  Todd  models  have  done  ever  since. 

They  did  not  call  it  the  "Todd  Check  Protector,"  or 
by  any  other  phrase  suggesting  the  family  name,  but  they 
coined  the  word  "Protectograph," 
which  from  that  day  to  this  has  been  «•£ 
the  Todd  trade  mark,  and  no  machine 
without  the  Todd  nameplate  can  be  Trademark 
called  by  the  name  "Protectograph," 

or  by  any  imitation  of  the  same.  Others,  following  the 
trail  blazed  by  the  Todds,  have  of  course  tried  to  use 
names  intended  to  sound  "just  as  good"  as  the  world- 
famous  Protectograph,  but  the  courts  have  upheld  the 
Todd  ownership  in  the  name. 

This  early  vintage  Protectograph  was  equipped  with 
copper  type  and  a  rubber  platen,  which  embossed  the 
approximate  amount  of  a  draft  into  the  paper,  using  black 
ink,  in  the  form  of  a  "Not  Over"  or  limiting  line — like 
this— 

NOT  OVER  THIRTY  DOLLARS  S30$ 

This  was  the  nearest  approach  to  thorough  protection 
that  had  been  offered  to  the  banking  world  up  to  that  time. 
The  "Not  Over"  line  was  only  approximate,  of  course. 
For  example,  a  draft  written  for  $900  had  to  be  stamped 
"Not  Over  $1,000,"  but  experience  proved  that  a  margin  of 
only  one  or  two  hundred  dollars  in  a  thousand  was  no 
temptation  to  a  crook,  because  a  dishonest  person  spending 
hundreds  of  dollars  in  good  money  for  a  draft  would  never 


52  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

take  the  risk  of  spoiling  it  and  losing  his  entire  investment 
unless  he  could  multiply  that  investment  many  times  over 
by  his  alteration. 

So,  as  far  as  the  "Not  Over"  idea  went,  it  proved  and  is 
still  proving  satisfactory  on  millions  and  millions  of  drafts 
and  checks. 

Now,  the  banks  were  a  trifle  sceptical  of  any  new  ideas 

in  check-protecting  machines  at  first;  but  when  the  U.  S. 

Treasury  placed  its  O.  K.  on  the  Todd  idea  by  installing 

Protectographs  for  the  protection  of 

Five  per  cent,  of  Government  warrants,  the  leading 
the  Banks  Now  banks  promptiy  followed  its  lead. 

Carry  100  per  cent,     ™,  ,,         .A  , 

of  the  Risk  of  Then    the    smaller  Clty  and   country 

"Raised"  Drafts          banks  came   into  line,   until  shortly 
there  was  no  "raw  material"  left  for 

the  "draft  raisers"  to  work  upon,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  record 
that  very  few  bank  drafts  have  been  reported  "raised"  in 
this  country  since  1903  or  '04;  and  since  at  least  90  or  95 
per  cent,  of  all  the  commercial  banks  now  use  the  Protec- 
tograph,  the  entire  risk  of  altered  drafts  is  shouldered  by 
the  few  institutions  which  do  not  enjoy  the  protection  of 
Todd  machines. 

After  a  few  years  of  the  "rubber  platen,"  the  Todd 
principle  was  brought  to  its  present  state  of  perfection  by 
the  Todd  invention  of  the  famous  "Steel  Platen."  This 
construction  consists,  essentially,  of  a  steel  platen,  corru- 
gated into  little  teeth  running  about  thirty-four  teeth  to 
the  inch.  The  type  characters  bear  similar  corrugations, 
or  teeth,  which  mesh  to  the  thousandth  fraction  of  an 
inch  with  the  teeth  in  the  platen. 

This  "shredding"  patent  is  the  foundation  of  the  modern 
check-protection  art,  and  its  status  as  an  original  and  fun- 
damental Todd  invention  has  been  upheld.  (A  list  of 
patent  dates  and  trade-mark  registrations  is  given  on 
page  1-V.) 

The  arrangement  of  the  "Steel  Platen"  in  relation  to 
the  type  characters  is  shown  in  the  accompanying  illustra- 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  PROTECTOGRAPH         53 

tion.  The  revolvable  typewheel  carries  the  grooved  limiting 
lines  upon  its  rim.  This  typewheel  is  brought  to  position 
for  the  desired  line,  as  indicated  by  the  dial.  A  slight 
pressure  brings  the  platen  up  against  the  type  with  a  re- 
ciprocating motion,  and  the  paper  is  caught  between  the 


DF  TYPE  WHEEL 

vw^^^ 


SECTION  DF  STEEL  PLATEN 


two  sets  of  teeth,  thus  cutting  the  characters  in  "shreds" 
through  the  document  and  at  the  same  time  driving  in- 
delible ink  through  and  into  these  shreds  under  a  pressure 
of  something  like  a  ton  to  the  square  inch — all  this  with  a 
slight  pressure  on  the  operating  lever. 

Could  anything  be  more  simple?  And  yet  it  took  years 
to  think  of  it,  and  more  years  to  perfect  it. 

The  imprint  of  the  Steel-Platen  Protectograph  looks 
like  this: 

NOT  OVER  THIRTY  DOLLARS  $30$ 

The  steel-platen  Protectograph  reigned  supreme  from 
1904  to  1913.  Most  of  the  leading  banks  had  adopted  it 
by  the  year  1905  or  1906,  and  by  that  time  the  Protecto- 
graph idea  had  also  gained  great  headway  in  England, 
Canada  and  other  countries. 

During  this  time  the  Todd  experimental  department 
had  been  working  constantly  on  improvements  and  refine- 
ments of  the  "shredding"  principle.  Among  these  was  the 
Check  Writer,  to  "shred"  the  entire  amount  in  words  rep- 
resenting Dollars  and  Cents,  instead  of  the  simple  "Not 
Over"  line.  In  1913  a  test  indicated  that  the  public 


54  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

was  ready  for  a  radical  step  in  methods  of  protection,  and  the 
Protectograph  Check  Writer  was  placed  upon  the  market. 

This  beautiful  machine,  built  with  the  precision  of  a 
scientific  instrument,  "shreds"  the  full  amount  of  any 
document — checks,  drafts,  stock  certificates,  trade  accept- 
ances, bills-of-lading,  letters-of-credit,  etc. — in  the  body  of 
the  document,  in  words,  in  two  colors,  like  this — 

FIFTY  ONE  SIX 

(Amount  Words  Red — Denominations  Black) 

The  Protectograph  Check  Writer  protects  as  it  writes, 
a  full  word  to  each  stroke  of  the  handle. 

There  is  never  any  question  as  to  the  amount  for 
which  the  document  was  drawn. 

The  two-color  "shredded"  line  is  the  most  legible, 
most  unalterable,  thing  imaginable. 

Drop  a  check  thus  written  into  the  boiling  caustic  bleach 
of  a  steam  laundry  and  the  printing  ink  and  writing  ink 
may  disappear;  the  paper  itself  may  fall  apart — but  the 
vivid  two-color  imprint  of  the  Protectograph  Check 
Writer,  with  its  indelibly  "shredded"  characters,  remains 
as  a  tribute  to  the  highest  development  of  the  art  of  pro- 
tecting negotiable  instruments  that  man  has  been  able  to 
devise  up  to  the  present  time. 

A  complete  description  of  the  Protectograph  Check 
Writer  will  be  found  on  other  pages. 

Its  "shredded"  characters  have  been  translated  into 
the  principal  monetary  systems  of  the  world,  and  there  is 
not  a  country  where  credits  are  exchanged  that  does  not 
know  the  Todd  Svstem. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  PROTECTOGRAPH         55 

On  the  traveller's  letter-of-credit,  on  the  berry  picker's 
pay  ticket;  on   the  Chinese  merchant's  foreign-exchange 

draft  for  "Ten  Taels,"  or  the  Dutch 

,       *  -11     <•  i    1-         r        «T-T  •        A  Protectograpn 
growers    bill-of-ladmg    for       Fijftig    for Every LanS and 

Guldens" — wherever    men    buy  and     Every  Language 
sell  and   transfer  credits,    the  world 

over,  you  will  find  machines  with  the  words  "Todd"  and 
"Protectograph"  on  the  nameplate  as  a  guarantee  of 
excellence,  thorough  protection  and  lasting  satisfaction  to 
the  owner. 


Rotary  "Shredding"  and  Printing  Mechanism — 
As  Applied  in  Protectograph  Check  Writer.  Type 
and  Platen  Mesh  to  the  Thousandth  of  an  Inch, 
and  both  revolve. 


times  actual  size) 


Sheffield-Fisher  Co. 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 


HOW  THE 
PROTECTOGRAPH  GREW 


1899 


1918 


WOODSHED  WHERE  THE  FIRST  MODEL  WAS  FILEI 
AND  FITTED  TOGETHER  IN  1899 


"PROTECTOGRAPH"  IS  A  TRADEMARK  NAME, 
ORIGINATED  AND  REGISTERED  IN  U.S.  PATENT 
OFFICE  BY  THE  TODD  COMPANY.  NO  DEVICE 
IS  A  "PROTECTOGRAPH"  UNLESS  IT  BEARS 
THE  NAME  "TODD"  ON  THE  NAME  PLATE- 
GIVING  PROTECTION  AND  LASTING  SATISFAC- 
TION TO  THE  USER. 


COPYRIGHT  1918 


TODD  PROTECTOGRAPH  Co 

(ESTABLISHED  1899) 
WORLD'S  LARGEST  MAKERS  OF  CHECK-PROTECTING  DEVICES 

ROCHESTER,  NEW  YORK 


?     TtH/f.   ,P<RO  TE  CTOGRA  PR    GREW 


HOW    THE    PROTE 


The  Ivy-Clad 
Office  Building 


Looking  Down 
Main  Drive, 
Past  Offices 


,  P'ROTE CTOGRAP H  GREW 


Experimental  Dept.,  Where  Irnprovements 
for  the  Years  to  Come  Are  Worked  Out 


Tool  making  Room — Expert  Mechan- 
ics and  Special  Equipment  Devoted 
to  Better  Manufacturing  Methods 


HOW     THE     PROTEC 


'  "  G>R  •£'• 


Stamping 
Brass,  Steel  and 
Copper  Parts 


Stock  Room  Along- 
side Loading  Platform 
on  N.  Y.  Central  Private 
Switch— $100,000  worth 
of  Raw  Material  Con- 
stantly on  Hand 


Grinding  and 
Polishing  Castings 


CTOGRAPH    GREW 


'Almost  Human"  Automatic  and 
Semi-Automatic  Screw  Machines 
Turning  Out  Extremely  Accurate 
Small  Parts 


Drill  Press  Department 


HOW     THE    PROTECTQGtRAXH' 


Mounting  the  Enduring  Bronze  Type, 
which  is  Cast  Specially  for  each  individual 
Proteetograph  Check  Writer  by  a  Famous 
Jewelry  Studio 


Cutting  the" 
in  Bronze  Type 


/'Ai  :&irj£.*fai£J  PK&TECTOGRAPH  GREW 


Spraying  En- 
amel, Four  Coats 
Baked  and 
Rubbed— 
"Finished  Like 
a  Piano" 


Enamelling  Ovens, 
where  the  Suc- 
cessive Coats  are 
Baked  to  an 
Endurin 
Satiny 
Finisl 


HOW    THE 


Grinding  and  Compounding  the 
Famous  Indelible  Protectograph  Ink 


Ink  Room — Impregnating  Ink  Rolls  with 
the  Indelible  Protectograph  Ink 


TECTOGRAPH    GREW 


Finished 
Stock  Room — 
Loading  Parts 
for  the 
Assemblers  01 
TraveUi 
BeW 


Assembling — 
Parts  Placed 
on  Belt  Travel 
Slowly  Past 
the  Assembler 
and  Come  off 
the  Lower  End 
of  Belt  in  the 
Form  of 
Finished 
Machines 


Perform 


HOW     THE     PROTECTO&RA'tfH 


Battery  of  Automatic 
Presses  in  ••i 

Bureau  of 
Printing 


PRO! 
Stockroom 


Bureau  of 
Printing,  De- 
voted Solely  t< 
Production  of 
Registered 
PROTOD 
Checks     t 
Largest 
vidual 
and  Draft 
Business 
Country 


TECTOGRAPH    GREW 


Lithographic  Engraving  Room — Artists 
Drawing  PROTOD  Check  Designs  on  Stone 


Type  Casting  Machine— The  Beautiful  Printing  on  PROTOD  Checks  Is 
Partly  Due  to  the  Use  of  New  Type  Produced  for  Each  Individual 
Check  Design;  Used  but  Once,  then  Thrown  into  the  Melting  Pot 

756-5-17-12-SFCo. 
Designed  and  Printed  by 


A  Move  Toward  Complete  Check 
Insurance 

O  business  man  would  think  of  sending  Bank 
Notes  to  the  extent  of  four  or  five  hundred  dol- 
lars thru  the  mail. 

He  is  conscious  of  "taking  a  chance"  when  he 
sends  even  a  dollar  or  five  dollars  thru  the  mail,  and  he 
most  distinctly  will  not  take  the  chance  when  it  comes  to 
big  money.  His  instinct  warns  him  that  in  spite  of  all 
precautions  of  the  Postorfice,  mail  is  stolen — and  stolen 
for  the  very  purpose  of  extracting  its  valuable  contents. 

The  check  with  its  amount  protected  by  the  Protecto- 
graph  Check  Writer  is  on  a  par  with  a  Bank  Note  so  far 
as  safety  is  concerned.  But  for  the  very  same  reason  that 
it  is  not  safe  to  send  Bank  Notes  of  large  denominations 
thru  the  mail,  it  is  equally  unwise  to  send  checks  of  large 
denominations — not  because  they  would  be  raised,  but 
because  they  could  be  cashed  for  their  face  value. 

"How  would  a  crook  go  about  cashing  a  check  for  $500 
that  was  drawn  to  some  well  known  firm?" 

He  could  not  endorse  the  payee's  name  on  the  back  of 
the  check  and  present  it  for  payment,  because  it  is  standard 
practice  thruout  the  United  States  that  firm  endorsements 
are  for  deposit  and  collection  only,  and  not  made  for  the 
purpose  of  securing  cash  over  the  counter.  Both  Banks 
and  business  men  know  this  so  well  that  any  attempt  on 
the  part  of  a  crook  to  endorse  the  name  of  John  Wanamaker 
or  Marshall  Field  &  Co.  on  the  back  of  a  check  would  result 
in  complete  failure.  Furthermore,  an  examination  of  the 
collection  of  manipulated  checks  in  the  archives  of  the  Todd 
Protectograph  Company,  showed  that  in  almost  every 
instance  the  change  of  the  payee's  name  was  the  key  to 
the  successful  cashing  of  a  raised  check. 


2-x  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

The  deduction  from  these  facts  was  inescapable: — that 
it  was  equally  essential  to  protect  the  name  of  the  original 
payee. 

Having  put  the  finger  on  the  sore  spot,  the  problem 
was  to  overcome  it. 

While  the  invention  of  the  '  'exact  amount"  Protecto- 
graph  Check  Writer  was  still  in  the  experimental  stage, 
the  thoughts  of  the  Todd  brothers  turned  with  increasing 
emphasis  to  certain  further  extensions  in  their  field. 

By  virtue  of  the  close  study  they  had  given  to  Bank 

checks  and  check  protection,  they  had  already  seen  the 

great  need  for  protection  of  points  of 

"Safe  as  a  Bank         weakness  on   the    check    other   than 
Note    Is  not  Very         ,  ,    .  .    ,        .  ,      .       , 

gafe  the  amount ;  and  this  foresight,  in  the 

light  of  recent  developments,  was 
almost  prophetic. 

Take,  for  instance,  an  ordinary  white  paper  check  into 
which  has  been  shredded  and  inked  the  exact  amount  for 
which  it  is  drawn,  by  the  Protectograph  Check  Writer; 
this  check  can  travel  anywhere  with  safety  so  far  as  the 
amount  goes,  yet  the  amount  protection,  although  it  had 
brought  the  individual  check  up  to  a  plane  of  safety  equal 
to  a  United  States  Bank  Note,  did  not  take  the  check 
further. 

After  experiments  of  all  kinds,  it  was  found  that  the 
need  was  not  for  a  "Safety  paper"  but  for  a  further  develop- 
ment beyond  "Safety"  paper,  and  PROTOD  Chemical 
Fibre  paper  was  introduced  for  this  purpose.  "Safety" 
papers  had  been  on  the  market  for  years  and  had  been  used 
under  the  mistaken  impression  that  they  protected  the 
amount  for  which  a  check  was  written.  A  few  pen  strokes 
covering  any  of  the  numerous  "pen  changes,"  such  as 
have  been  frequently  illustrated,  completely  destroy  the 
idea  that  "Safety"  paper  is  a  factor  in  amount  protection. 
But  it  turned  out  that  "Safety"  paper  (with  improve- 
ments), is  a  factor  in  payee  name  protection,  and  that  is 
where  it  has  a  field. 


COMPLETE  CHECK  INSURANCE  3-x 

An  examination  of  the  different  "Safety"  papers  on 
the  market  showed  that  they  were  merely  ordinary  bond 
papers,  treated  on  the  surface  with  sensitive  colors.  There 
were  three  classes  of  "Safety"  paper:  the  first  known  as 
"Pantograph,"  where  the  sentitive  colors  were  applied  in 
the  form  of  a  repeated  design  or  trade-mark;  the  second 
were  solid-color  papers  without  attempt  at  design;  and 
the  third  were  the  commonly  known  "Safety"  papers 
which  had  a  pattern  of  some  form  of  wavy  lines. 

A  very  few  tests  showed  that  all  of  these  "safety"  tints 
could  be  removed  from  a  check,  leaving  it  pure  white,  and 
that  the  genuine  signature  could  be 
retained  while  this  process  was  going 
on;  then  by  the  use  of  a    tint  block       Checks  and  Drafts 
(which  is  nothing  more  than  a  photo- 
graphic reproduction  of  the  original  design)  the  "safety" 
tints  could  be  reapplied  to  the  white  paper  and  the  check 
could  be  rewritten  in  the  payee  and  date  lines. 

It  was  clear  that  the  Todd  Company  could  not  adopt 
"Safety"  paper  in  any  of  its  forms  and  maintain  its  standing 
as  a  leader-,  it  would  merely  be  copying  that  which  had  been 
in  use  for  years — without  success. 

After  considerable  search  and  experimenting,  it  was 
found  that  the  fibre  of  paper  could  be  impregnated  with 
certain  chemicals  that,  when  brought  in  contact  with 
chemical  ink  erasers,  would  produce  a  combustion  that 
would  burn  and  destroy  the  fibre  of  the  paper,  leaving  a 
charred  framework  that  would  barely  hold  the  check  to- 
gether, weakening  it  beyond  repair  and,  at  the  same  time, 
producing  a  permanent  and  noticeable  burned  appearance 
that  could  not  be  retinted  or  covered  up. 

This  paper  was  called  "PROTOD." 

Still  it  seemed  as  if  the  field  of  complete  check  protec- 
tion was  not  entirely  covered. 

Investigation  showed,  with  increasing  clearness,  the 
tremendous  danger  of  forgery  and  counterfeiting. 

Everybody  is  familiar  with   the  precautions  that  the 


4-x  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

United  States  Treasury  takes  to  keep  the  silk-thread  Bank 
Note  paper,  which  is  used  to  make  Government  money, 
away  from  crooks. 

Yet  for  over  one  hundred  years,  counterfeiters,  in  gangs 
and  singly,  have  pushed  their  trade  of  imitating  money. 

About  three  years  ago  a  singular  thing  occurred.    There 

was  an  almost  abrupt  cessation  of  counterfeiting  cases,  and 

the  Secret  Service  Department,  act- 

Counterfeiting  ing  for  the  Treasury,  had  less  to  do 

Checks  L  than  ever  before  in  ks  experience  If 

detectives  generally  did  not  know  the 

crooks  so  well,  they  might  have  been  pleased  at  this 
apparent  success  of  their  efforts,  but  instead  they  were 
puzzled:  not  being  able  to  see  the  reason  why  crooks 
stopped  counterfeiting. 

The  secret  has  come  out.  All  of  a  sudden  it  became 
clear  to  the  crooks  that  there  were  more  checks  in  circula- 
tion in  the  United  States  than  there  were  Bank  Notes,  and 
that  the  checks  were  for  larger  sums;  were  easily  nego- 
tiable in  these  large  sums,  and,  most  important — that  the 
business  houses  who  issued  checks  did  not  have  a  Federal 
Secret  Service  or  a  Police  Department  to  back  them  up. 
Business  houses  were  more  likely  to  charge  off  a  job  to 
"Profit  and  Loss"  and  forget  it;  whereas  the  Secret  Service 
of  the  Government  never  forgets. 

There  has  been  a  wave  of  counterfeiting  and  forgery  of 
the  check  forms  and  signatures  of  Banks,  Corporations  and 
Business  houses  during  the  last  three  years,  reflected  in 
newspaper  stories  all  over  the  country. 

Of  course,  the  secret  of  the  success  of  the  crook  lies  in 
the  fact  that  he  can  secure  identically  the  same  paper  from 
dealers  and  printers  as  is  used  by  the  business  house. 

Suppose  the  New  York  Central  Railroad  used  ordi- 
nary bond  paper  for  their  checks,  and  suppose  that  they 
had  a  lithograph  design,  in  other  words,  a  "private  check." 
The  crooks  could  go  to  a  paper  jobber  and  buy  as  much,  or 
as  little,  of  that  bond  paper  blank  and  unprinted  as 


COMPLETE  CHECK  INSURANCE  5-x 

they  could  pay  for.  They  are  skilled  artists  and  could 
copy  the  N.  Y.  C.  R.  R.  design  on  a  lithograph  stone,  and 
from  that  stone,  without  any  elaborate  apparatus,  could 
produce  as  many  lithographed  checks  as  they  wanted. 

When  you  stop  to  think  of  the  ease  with  which  these 
same  counterfeiters  used  to  duplicate  the  cycloidal  designs 
produced  by  the  geometric  lathe  on  Government  Bank 
Notes,  you  can  see  how  easy  it  would  be  for  them  to  pro- 
duce any  check  form  that  could  be  used;  and  when  you 
realize  that  they  forged  the  signatures 
of  the  Treasury  Department  officials 
so  perfectly  that  frequently  a  counter- 
feit would  be  in  circulation  for  months  before  it  was  dis- 
covered, you  can  readily  see  that  it  would  be  no  task  at 
all  for  them  to  forge  the  signatures  and  counter  signatures 
that  might  appear  on  the  N.  Y.  C.  check. 

The  result  has  been  that  checks  of  all  kinds,  big  rail- 
roads, industrial  corporations,  retailers,  etc.,  have  been 
counterfeited  and  forged  successfully  in  the  last  three  years. 
This  was  a  considerably  tougher  proposition  to  overcome 
than  the  matter  of  preventing  changes  in  the  payee's  name, 
but  overcome  it  was. 

First,  we  paralleled  the  methods  of  the  United  States 
Government  in  the  production  of  PROTOD.  In  other 
words,  we  registered  the  paper  stock  so  that  we  were  sure 
no  one  could  secure  a  single  piece  of  unprinted  PROTOD. 
It  was  not  for  sale  by  any  printer,  stationer,  paper  jobber, 
or  other  dealer  anywhere  in  the  United  States. 

Next,   by  the  intro- 
jrl  fpjj  duction  of  the  now  fa- 

ll Ibi  U^  mous  PROTOD  water- 
mark, we  secured  the 
same  positive  identifica- 
tion of  the  paper  as  the 
Government  does  by  us- 
ing silk  threads  in  the 
bank-note  paper  stock, 


6-x  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

because  water-marks  cannot  be  imitated  or  duplicated 
except  by  the  manufacturer  of  paper.  And  bond  paper 
cannot  be  manufactured  except  in  a  certain  limited  and 
perfectly  well  known  number  of  factories  in  the  United 
States. 

Finally,  there  was  to  be  considered  the  matter  of  can- 
celling samples  of  checks  that  had  already  been  made,  for 
this  was  found  to  have  been  a  fruitful  source  of  profit  to 
crooks  in  the  past.  They  would  call  on  a  printer,  stating 

that  they  were  going  to  have  some 

55,000  Conservative  checks  made  and  ask  for  samples> 
Banks  and  Business  ™,  .  ,  •  *  . 

Houses  Adopt  Fhe  Prmter  let  them  have  hls  very 

PROTOD  best  work,  representing  checks  he  had 

made  for  his  customers,  and  unfor-. 

tunately,  it  did  not  occur  to  the  printer  to  cancel  these 
samples. 

In  the  Todd  plant  behind  the  walls  of  the  Bureau  of 
Printing,  every  sample  check  is  thoroughly  and  completely 
cancelled  by  shredding  the  words,  ' 'SAMPLE  CHECK 
NOT  VALID"  by  the  Todd  process.  No  uncancelled  check 
is  allowed  to  go  out. 

Three  years  ago  the  Todd  Company  presented  its 
Complete  System  of  Check  Protection  to  the  public.  At 
that  time  not  a  single  PROTOD  check  was  in  use  in  the 
United  States.  Today,  there  are  over  55,000  users  of  the 
complete  system  of  check  protection,  including  a  big 
percentage  of  famous  names  in  business  in  the  United 
States.  The  checks  are  beautiful,  distinctive,  appealing 
to  the  natural  pride  of  the  business  man  in  having  some- 
thing that  reflects  his  business;  they  have  a  splendid  writ- 
ing surface,  and  they  give  complete  protection  when  used  in 
connection  with  the  Protectograph  Check  Writer. 

Guarantees 

Another  startling  evolution  in  the  Todd  Protectograph 
business,  adopted  at  the  time  PROTOD  checks  were  put 
on  the  market,  was  the  plan  of  guaranteeing  the  product. 


COMPLETE  CHECK  INSURANCE 


7-X 


With    ordinary    materials    and    articles   of   commerce, 
the  failure  of  a  product  to    perform  its  function  is  at- 
tended with  annoyance,  discomfort  and  dissatisfaction,  but 
_    rarely  with  heavy  financial  loss;   with   the 
Todd  system  of  complete  check  protection, 
or  with  any  system  of  check  protection,  a 
failure  of  the  article  to  perform  its  func- 
tion carries  with  it  such  unpleasant  possi- 
bilities of  law  suits,  loss  of  money,  time, 
credit    standing,   et   cetera,    that  business 
men  in  considering  the  purchase  of  such  a 
system,  frequently  asked,  "Do  you  guaran- 
An  iron-ciad  Forgery  tee  that  your  system  cannot  be  beaten?" 

Insurance  Bond 

The  simple  word  of  a  salesman,  honor- 
able though  he  may  be,  cannot  act  as  such  a  guarantee. 
The  simple  word  of  a  manufacturer  is  not  such  a  guar- 
antee. Furthermore,  it  is  illegal  for  a  manufacturer  to 
give  a  guarantee  that  comes  within  the  legal  definition  of 
the  term  "insurance";  such  guarantees  can  only  be  given 
by  authorized  and  incorporated  insurance  companies,  sub- 
ject to  the  inspection  of  Insurance 
Departments  of  the  various  States. 

The  General  Indemnity  Corpora- 
tion of  America  was  organized  and 
formed  by  Messrs.  G.  W.  and  L.  M. 
Todd  to  comply  with  the  laws  of  the  State  of  New  York  re- 
garding guarantees,  and  these  guarantee  bonds  issued  by  the 
General  Indemnity  Corporation,  running  for  a  period  of 
two  years  in  the  principal  sum  of  $1,000,  were  given  by  the 
Todd  Company,  at  their  own  expense,  to  users  of  the  Com- 
plete System. 

Up  to  January  1,  1917,  the  guarantee  covered  the 
raising  of  checks  only.  Since  January  1,  1917,  the  guar- 
antee has  been  enlarged  in  its  scope  so  that  today  the 
user  of  the  Todd  System  of  Complete  Check  Protection  is 
supplied,  free  of  charge,  with  a  bond  for  $1,000,  running  for 


An  Insurance 
Policy  to  Every 
Purchaser  of  Com- 
plete System 


8-X  PROTECTING  THE  NATION'S  MONEY 

a  period  of  two  years,  protecting  him 

(1)  Against  raised  checks.  (2)  Against  loss  thru  changes 
of  payee's  name.  (3)  Against  loss  thru  the  failure  of  the 
system  of  registering  PROTOD  checks  against  forgery. 

The  question  occasionally  comes  up,  "If  your  system  is 
so  perfect,  why  is  the  guarantee  necessary?" 

The  answer  is  obvious;  namely,  that  the  belief  of  the 
Todd  Protectograph  Company  in  the  perfection  of  its 
system  is  evidenced  by  its  willingness  to  give  the  guarantee; 
the  guarantee  being  a  legal  document  enforceable  thru  the 
Courts. 

Over  50,000  of  these  guarantee  bonds  have  been 
issued,  covering  a  period  of  three  years,  and  so  far  not  a 
single  claim  has  ever  been  made,  which  is  a  substantial 
support  of  our  position  that  the  Todd  System  is  crook- 
proof. 

(PROTOD  Samples  and  Net  Prices  for  any^ 
Desired  Method  of  Reproduction  by  Print-  \ 
ing  or  Lithography,  will  be  sent  on  request  m 
to  Responsible  Principals.  J 


756-5-17-12-SFCo. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY, 
BERKELEY 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

Books  not  returned  on  time  are  subject  to  a  fine  of 
50c  per  volume  after  the  third  day  overdue,  increasing 
to  $1.00  per  volume  after  the  sixth  day.  Books  not  in 
demand  may  be  renewed  if  application  is  made  before 
expiration  of  loan  period. 


NOV 


v 


AUTO  DISC  CIRC  AUG 


12 '94 


20m-H,'20 


YB   18239 


372863 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 


